


Revision

by MacBeth



Category: MacGyver (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Novella, Post-Series, macgyverisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MacBeth/pseuds/MacBeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Stringer: Mac and Sam hit the road. Will it hit back? Can they stay out of trouble? Are you kidding? Two men, two motorcycles, four directions, and a few new ways of looking at things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fixing the Centre

**Author's Note:**

> additional warnings: language, violence

 

 _  
**One: Fixing the Centre**   
_

 

The first phone call had been the most nerve-wracking.

“Hiya, Pete.  How’s it goin’?”

“MacGyver!  Where are you?  Are you all right?  What’s happened?”  The words had spilled out in a rush, tumbling out from the mountain of worry Pete hadn’t been able to wish out of existence.  Pete felt embarrassed at the outburst, but couldn’t stop it.

“Whaddya mean, what’s happened?”

“Well, are you in any kind of trouble?  Is everything all right?”

It had been hard, incredibly hard, not having MacGyver around, even harder to stop thinking about it.  No Mac to drop by the Phoenix building and grumble about a new assignment, or the lack of a new assignment.  Or bug Pete about exercise or his eating habits, or bully him into another overambitious trip into the mountains – hiking, skiing, fishing – or simply show up at Pete’s office and chivvy him homewards, to order pizza or Chinese and grouse about how unhealthy it was before sprawling on the sofa to watch a rented movie.  Or simply pace up and down, talking energetically about upcoming projects at Phoenix, or the latest promising street kids to wash up at the Challengers Club, his face shining with unquenchable optimism, flickering hands gesturing as if he was catching fireflies.

“We’re fine, Pete.”  MacGyver sounded faintly injured at the suggestion that they might not be.  “We’ve seen some real nice sunsets, Sam caught a whopper of a trout – and **_I_** came up empty-handed – and we managed to hit Death Valley right after it rained and saw the flowers.  I think Sam took about a million pictures of them.  You shoulda seen it – he went totally nuts.”

It had been brutal.  The first week or so had been easy – Mac was often gone for longer than that – but by the time three weeks had gone by, Pete had grown testy.  No Mac hanging out in the research labs, talking opaque technical nonsense with Willis, or teasing Helen at her desk, or sitting rapt at the computer terminals with his keyboard clicking like a forest of cicadas, or turning up in the Phoenix day care centre, fooling around with the staffers’ kids when he was supposed to be working.

“You’re _sure_ you’re okay?”

“Whoa!  What’s the big deal?  Can’t I pick up a phone without bein’ in trouble?”

“You never have before.”

“ _Pete!_ ”

But more than anything else, it had been just plain impossible to stop worrying about him.

Even though it was damned foolish.  And selfish.  Pete had _wanted_ MacGyver to take this road trip; he and Sam had twenty years of missed opportunities to make up for.  And Mac had always been restless, always torn between the need for a fixed centre and the push to go find something new.  For years, there had been enough interesting field work at Phoenix to keep him reasonably absorbed and contented . . . but even at the best of times, there had always been a tug from the rest of the world.

Sam had turned Mac’s life upside down, and staying still wasn’t Mac’s way of handling the change.

“You’re a trouble magnet, MacGyver.  You both are.  What am I supposed to expect?”

During the first call, it had been difficult to believe, even as Mac rambled cheerfully on about the road and the scenery and the odd people they’d met or seen, that there actually wasn’t some kind of trouble or problem.  But when the call ended several minutes later and the other shoe hadn’t dropped, Pete sat looking at the receiver in his hand with a smile of fond wonder.

The next call came two weeks later, from the Grand Canyon.  Mac was almost burbling with delight.

“Pete, can you believe I’ve never been here before?  It’s practically in our backyard!  And I missed it!”

“Where are you headed next?”

“Up to Utah, to the rock country around Moab.  Sam’s never done any real rock climbing.  He’d never seen the Grand Canyon either – heck, he really hasn’t seen that much, period.  He’s spent most of his time in cities since making it out of China.”

“You’re not planning on hiking all the way to the bottom and back, are you?”

Mac’s answering laugh made Pete smile, but at the same time he felt his eyes growing moist – those maddening, unreliable eyes that were slowly shutting him up in a prison of inability.

“ _Way_ too late, Pete!  We did that yesterday – it was _amazing_!”

 

* * *

 

After that, the calls grew more frequent, and eventually became fairly regular.  It wasn’t until the sixth or seventh call that MacGyver actually asked for help with anything – they’d met someone on the road, a runaway kid who needed help from a more discreet source than social services.  The operative Pete sent out cracked a teen prostitution ring; but by that time, Mac and Sam were in Yellowstone, and Mac was more interested in talking about Sam’s newest experiments in photography.

“ _Waaaay_ too much time in cities, Pete.  He’s hardly ever even _looked_ at scenery, and he’d never even thought about photographing it before.  Can you believe that?  You know what he said?  ‘I always thought it would be boring, but it sure is easy to work with.’ ”

The sounds of a friendly tussle, and it was Sam on the line instead.  “Well, it _is_ easy!  It just sits there and lets you pick your shot.  And it never complains afterwards that you got its bad side.”

“So you two aren’t driving each other crazy yet?”

“Aw, I think it’s years too late for that.”

“Well, let me know if you need anything, okay?”

Pete’s offer had been almost a reflex, but the pause that followed on the other end had him sitting up, alert.

“Actually, Mr. Thornton – ”

“Please, Sam, just Pete will do.”

“Um, yeah.  Anyway, there’s something . . . I mean, I’ve got my own network for selling my usual stuff . . . actually, they’re kind of pissed off at me right now ‘cause I haven’t sent them much lately, but I figure that’s their problem.  Anyway, now Dad’s got me to try this nature shooting, and I don’t have any contacts for that kind of material.  If you know anyone who could give me a lead or two, that’d be great.”

A warm glow burned through Pete at the casual word ‘Dad’.  He felt his face relax into a broad smile.  How long had it been since he’d felt like smiling?  “Sure, no problem.  I’ll ask the head of our photography staff here – I bet she knows half a dozen people in the right part of the business.  We can – ”

Sam interrupted.  “One thing – I’m not asking for a free trip.  It’s a whole new market and I just don’t have the contacts yet.  But I don’t want any favours, understand?  At this rate, I should have a portfolio ready for presentation in another month or so, and if the work isn’t good enough to stand on its own, I don’t want anybody propping it up.  Okay?”

Pete tried to keep the catch out of his throat.  Over the phone, the voices were very similar, but the personalities were even more alike.  “Don’t worry, Sam.  No matter what your father tells you, I really do know when to stop meddling.  Which is more than he usually knows.  And you can tell him I said so.”

Sam laughed, comfortably and easily.  “Anyway, here’s Dad again.  Thanks, um, thanks, Pete!”

Pete heard Mac pick up the line again, but he didn’t wait for him to start talking.  “Nature photography, huh?  Is he any good?”

The pause before Mac replied might have meant trouble brewing – another man might have been fumbling for a tactful evasion, but Pete knew Mac too well to make that mistake.  He sighed with relief, then smiled at his own anxiety.  How could MacGyver’s son be anything but talented?

“He’s beyond terrific, Pete.  You know his mom was a photojournalist too. He’s just got this amazing eye.  You know he’s been doing newspaper work all this time – he said he learned to look for the right instant and catch it.  And somehow, he’s got this knack of taking a picture so it feels like everything’s alive and moving.  Almost breathing.  Even when it’s just, y’know, rocks.”

“That sounds great.”

“We’re gonna be going up into the back country tomorrow – he wants to try out wildlife shots.  We had to sidetrack all the way to Denver first so he could get another lens.”  Pete could hear how bright Mac’s smile must be.  “We’ve, um, been playin’ kind of a catch-up game . . . the lens was his birthday present.”

“Yeah?  Which birthday?”

“All of ’em.  You know how much those things _cost_?”

 

 * * *

 

The first call from Sam was precipitated by the first real fight.  That call didn’t actually go to Pete; Sam and Helen had hit it off strongly during the restless weeks of waiting for Mac’s broken arm to heal.  The call went to Helen, but she was in Pete’s office five minutes after ringing off.

“Just don’t tell me either of them jumped on a motorcycle and roared off in a fit of temper.”

“No, it sounds as if they’re simply avoiding the subject and snapping at each other with every supposedly unrelated sentence.”

Pete ran a hand over his aching eyes.  “Anything we can do to help them?”

“Not unless our research department’s cooked up a cure for pride, or stubbornness.  Or youth.”

“Oh, we’ve got a cure for youth.  The problem is, it’s too damned slow to be of any help.”

Helen laid a hand on Pete’s shoulder.  “They’ll work it out.  Give them time.  MacGyver’s never been any good at carrying grudges.  He gets bored too quickly to go on sulking.  We knew it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Well, _you_ did.  Thank you for not saying ‘I told you so’.”

Helen smiled grimly.  “It took my youngest son an extra five years before he decided to go to college after all.  And he had to decide it for himself – which meant he had to find out, the hard way, that the degree he didn’t have was actually worth something.  You can pull all the strings you like – line up a dozen colleges, call in favours, arrange scholarships – but in the end, nothing really matters unless Sam decides that he want it himself.”

 

Usually, striking camp was quick and easy; both of them were used to traveling light.  But even the most relaxed style of travel calls for cooperation.  The running argument had been running on and off for three days now, mostly running in circles.

“I don’t _need_ a damned college degree.  I have all the work I want – sometimes more than I really need!  I’ve been doin’ fine for almost three years now.”

Sam still had to watch himself, so he didn’t slip into juicier language.  At first, it had annoyed him that his father was so touchy about swearing – between Viet Nam and the Los Angeles slums, MacGyver must have heard every foul word in several different languages hundreds of times over.  _You’d think he’d be immune to it_ . . . but he wasn’t.  And somehow, Sam found that his father’s attitude mattered to him.  Instead of breaking out into really serious obscenities to gain the upper hand, he found himself holding back firmly from scoring such an easy point.

“I don’t owe anybody anything, and I can damned well take care of myself!”

“Okay, _fine_.  You don’t need one _now_.  Later – ”

“Then I’ll get one later!”

In the end, they agreed not to discuss it for a while.  Just how they were supposed to figure out how long ‘a while’ might be wasn’t discussed either.

 

Privately, late at night in his office, Pete caught himself wishing that the rift wouldn’t close – that MacGyver would abandon the road trip and come back home.  He scowled at the oversized images on his computer screen.  No.  He didn’t really want that.  Wherever they were going, they had to get there before there could be any thought of returning.

And they might not come back at all; or come back irretrievably changed.  Pete remembered some of his own trips, including a particular one, years ago, into the deep desert of the Empty Quarter.  He almost hadn’t come back from that trip . . . and he hadn’t even realised at the time that his life had taken its most important turn on that journey, out there under the blazing sun.

 

It was some time before the next call came, and by then the tension seemed to have eased, or at least been set aside for the time being.  Mac and Sam were in Banff, and Mac was mostly interested in telling Pete about Sam’s inexplicable preference for snowboarding over skiing.

“Just tell me you aren’t riding those blasted motorcycles in the snow, okay?”

“C’mon, Pete.  I’m not actually crazy – ”

 _Even though I’ve had colleagues from half the intelligence services on the planet insist that you are . . ._   Pete dismissed the thought.

“ – we left the bikes with an old college buddy of mine when we hit the snow zone.  We were gonna rent a Jeep, but Matt insisted on lending us his.”

“So how’s it going?”

There was an exasperated sound from the other end of the line.  “Turns out Sam really doesn’t like cold weather.  He says he had enough of it growin’ up in Chicago – that’s part of why he made a beeline for California when he headed out on his own.”

 

* * * 

 

“You mean you never even really finished high school?  You just _dropped out_?”

“You don’t understand!  I was _bored!_ ”

“Sam . . . ”  Mac hunted for words.  He _did_ understand, all too well – if it hadn’t been for two of his own high school teachers, who had gone miles above and beyond the call of duty to keep an intractably inquisitive student challenged and focused, he would have cracked himself.  As it was, there had been plenty of days when the only thing keeping him in school was the fear of disappointing his mother.  Sam hadn’t had that motivation – or that restriction.

“Anyway, I didn’t just drop out.  I got my GED, and I went to work.”  Sam was bent over the map, running a finger along the dotted line of the Forest Service road they were hoping to follow . . . assuming it hadn’t been snowed in yet.

“What about your foster parents?  Didn’t they try to stop you?”

“My what?”

“Your foster parents.  The couple you said raised you.  Your mom’s friends.  You never talk about them, you never call them.”  MacGyver tugged at the edge of the map, and Sam’s eyes followed the dotted line off the edge of the page and up to meet his father’s eyes.  “Sam, are they dead?”  _Aw, man, did you lose them too?_

Sam’s face had set into a mask of stubbornness.  “They’re still alive.”

“Then what is _wrong_ with you?  All this time we’ve been on the road – I’ve been callin’ Pete, and you haven’t called anybody but your editors.”  MacGyver let go of the map and studied his son’s face.  “They leaned on you to go to college, didn’t they?  Your foster parents?”

“Dad, would you stop doin’ that?”

“What?  Makin’ guesses?”

“Getting them right.”  Sam pushed the map away, stuffed his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, turned away.  Mac dropped the subject.

 

It was five days before that part of the conversation resumed.  They’d fallen easily into that pattern – they could be silent together for hours, or just talk about the immediate needs of the moment, or discuss some unrelated item – and then pick up the thread of a conversation from days before, as long as it was important enough.

This one was as important as it got.

“They weren’t really my foster parents.”

“What?”  They were sitting in a diner somewhere east of Crowheart, Wyoming, waiting for breakfast.  Mac had been studying the surface of his orange juice; Sam had been wondering if he’d ever get used to the way all the waitresses ogled his father when they thought no-one was watching.  Or how he never even seemed to notice they were doing it.

Mac set the orange juice down.  “But you said – ”

“I said they were journalist friends of my mom’s.  They _wanted_ to adopt me, or at least, you know, get formal court custody, but they couldn’t.”  Sam found himself examining his coffee, fighting the flush he was sure was creeping up his neck.  “We just kinda laid low for a lot of years, so the courts wouldn’t interfere . . . they were always afraid I’d be taken away.  We moved around a lot, too, but I didn’t mind that.  I was used to it.”

He glanced up at his father uneasily, and saw simple puzzlement on Mac’s face.

“I don’t understand.”

“ _Dad_ – ”  Sam looked pained.  “They were both guys.  Okay?  Now do you get it?”

“Oh.”  Mac picked up his drinking straw from the table, twiddled it between his fingers.  “Yeah, that’d be a real problem when it came to adoption.”  He ran a thumbnail along the straw, opening up a slit, picked up another straw and threaded it through, bent the ends to form a wobbly platform with legs.  He began to add toothpicks as triangular braces.  “Do they know you found me?”

“Well, yeah, of course . . . I haven’t been _totally_ out of touch, I just . . . ”

“You just made sure I wasn’t around when you called them.”  Mac started to add another level to his platform.

“Um, yeah.”  Sam picked up one of the straw wrappers and began to fold it in his fingers, his thumbnail making sharp creases in the paper.

“You figured I’d freak out?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

Sam bent over his improvised origami, adding more straw wrappers, weaving them into a small square, then crimping the square into a flower shape.  It was a long moment before he looked at MacGyver’s face again.  When he did, he met a matter-of fact, expectant look.

“So when do I get to meet them?”  When Sam couldn’t answer, Mac picked up the woven paper flower and balanced it on top of his drinking-straw tower as he continued.  “Or are you afraid we’ll all gang up on you over the college thing?  Three dads all lecturing you at once – no wonder you didn’t want to tell me.”

 

* * * 

 

From Banff, they had turned south again; in mid-December, they left the motorcycles with another one of Mac’s apparently inexhaustible supply of friends, and boarded a plane for LA.  For the first time ever, MacGyver attended the Phoenix Christmas party.

It had been an impulse, and he started to regret it before he’d rung off – but Pete had seemed so delighted, and had dived into the arrangements before MacGyver could start having any second thoughts.  He’d called Helen in to his office while Mac was still on the phone, sworn her to secrecy, and set her to work.  This close to the holidays, it took some of Pete’s best string-pulling to get airplane seats for Mac and Sam; and when the seats turned out to be first class, MacGyver felt uncomfortably embarrassed.

“What’s the big deal?” Sam wanted to know.  “It’s not like you conned anyone out of these seats.”

Mac smiled faintly.  “I’ve done full-blown con jobs before without feeling like this.”  He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth and he saw Sam’s face light up with fascination and excitement.

“No kidding?  Real cons?  I mean, like, the Sting and all that?”

Mac shrugged and nodded sheepishly.  For the rest of the flight, he had to fill Sam in on the details.  _So what’s your old man do for a living, kid?  Oh, he lies, cheats, steals, smuggles, gets into fights, breaks into anything that’s got a lock, and dabbles in sabotage on the side.  Once in a while, for variety, he blows stuff up.  What a great role model._

But the legroom in first class had been, well, first-class.  And he owed Pete for it.  Which meant he couldn’t say ‘no’ to what Pete and Helen had planned for the party.

“Just one question, Pete – do you _always_ dress up as Santa for these?”

Pete adjusted his ill-fitting white beard and patted the oversized stomach.  “I’ve been telling you for years that you ought to come.  If only for the laughs.”  Pete lowered his voice to a whisper.  “But you know the best part?”

“What?”

“After I’ve worn this get-up for an hour or two, I get to take all the padding off, and I actually feel thin for a few minutes.”  Pete winked and bounded out onto the stage in the huge main auditorium at Phoenix, haranguing the crowd about their past misdeeds. 

“Don’t let the white cane fool you – I see you when you’re sleeping.  Especially when you nod off during staff meetings.  Speaking of which, somebody better wake up Willis.  It’s time for his nap.”

When Pete made a grand gesture with his cane to summon the ‘elf’ with his sack of presents, MacGyver picked up the bag – a huge prop item filled with foam, light as a feather – and Sam helped him position it just right.

At first, all the crowd saw was Santa’s giant toy bag, carried onto the stage by some poor sap in faded jeans and sneakers, his body completely hidden by the bag.  When Mac dropped it at Pete’s feet and the rest of the Phoenix staff saw who it was, pandemonium broke out. 

As the crowd surged up on stage to engulf him, Mac swore he could actually hear Pete shouting, “Ho ho ho!  Merry Christmas!”  _Pete, I am **so** gonna get you for this one._

 _  
_

In the end, it wasn’t too bad.  MacGyver was hugged and squeezed, pummeled and pounded, and kissed repeatedly – and that part mostly wasn’t bad at all.  There had been holiday punch and other indulgences, but most of the Phoenix crowd weren’t the type to get stupidly drunk at parties, although one of the women on Willis’ research staff kept trying to tell him her life story.

Sam had come in for his share of the attention as well; and to Mac’s surprise, he didn’t seem especially comfortable in the large, cheerfully affectionate crowd either – he was at least as antsy as his father.  Eventually, Mac sought refuge in the cozy waiting room off the main lobby of the Phoenix building, and found Sam already there, studying the photos of Phoenix personnel that decked the walls.

“Wow.  They sure missed you.”  The reception at Mac’s surprise return visit to the Challengers Club had been just as enthusiastic, but at least the crowd had been a lot smaller, and mostly composed of kids.

“Aw, they’re just havin’ a tough time adjusting to the need to hire a real plumber when things break down.”  MacGyver settled into the overstuffed sofa beside the bookshelf that covered one entire wall.

“Dad . . . ”  Sam had spent most of the last half-hour studying the big map on the wall, wondering how many of the flagged Phoenix projects that dotted its relief surface marked his father’s achievements.  “I hadn’t really thought about it – the road trip and everything.  I’ve been taking you away from your work – ”

Mac cut him off.  “Sam, _you’re_ my work right now.  Don’t you get that?”

His heart sank when Sam looked at him with narrowed eyes.  “So once I agree to go to college, your work’s done?  And you can get back to your life?”

“That is _not_ what I meant!”  Mac started to pull himself up from the sofa.  _That’s why I hate parties.  People fight at parties.  Or afterwards._

They both turned their heads with sudden relief when they heard the tapping sound just outside the doorway.  Pete’s white cane appeared, followed by a jovial Pete.  He had changed out of the Santa costume but still wore the smirk.  “Well, here you are!  I wondered how long it would last before you found some place to den up.”

Mac looked sheepish.  Sam glanced at the wall map and wondered what it would take to get Pete to really start talking about it – or, better yet, the illuminated wall map display up in the Operations centre. The markings on this map were sanitised, only showing the projects on the public side of Phoenix. The Ops map, on the other hand – _that_ would be worth hearing about.

Pete easily located the armchair nearest the door and settled into it.  “MacGyver, it’s so good to see you again.  I’m really glad you made it.”  Underneath the joy, Pete was sharply alert.  With the ever darker fog shrouding his narrowed world, he was learning to understand people’s expressions without seeing them clearly – sometimes without seeing them at all.  He was certain that Mac was bracing himself against expected pressure to come back to Phoenix.  Instead, Pete asked, “Where are you two going next?”

There was the barest hint of a moment’s catch before Mac answered, and Pete knew he’d read it right.  “Well, we haven’t really decided yet – ”

“Somewhere warm,” Sam said, very decidedly.

“ – somewhere warm, I guess.”

“No kidding?  I can’t blame you for that, Sam – I’m not that fond of ice and snow myself.  Have you thought about Hawaii?  You can’t exactly drive there, but I bet you could rent motorcycles once you’d arrived.”

Sam’s face lit up at the thought, but Mac raised an eyebrow.  “Pete, I sure hope you’re not about to mention, casually, that there’s a job you need done in Hawaii, if I just happen to be going that way . . . ”

“MacGyver!”  Pete looked injured.  “Would I do that?”

“In a minute.”

“You know what really amazes me?  All these months and you’ve actually managed to keep out of trouble.  It’s hard to believe.  No, scratch that – it’s almost _impossible_ to believe.”  And there it was:  Pete felt the shift, and looked from one set of dark, suddenly opaque eyes to the other.  His own eyes took on a look of exasperation.  “MacGyver . . . is there something you haven’t told me about?”

“Um . . . ”  Mac chewed his lip.  Sam broke in.

“Dad, that’s his totally-not-buying-it-face, right?”

“Yup.”  Mac tucked his thumbs into his pockets and gave Sam a rueful look.  “That’s the one.”

 


	2. Touching the Sky

 

 _**Two: Touching the Sky** _

 

 _If you wanna see something new – and I always like seeing new things – there’s different ways of going about it._

 _The first way seems like it’s the simplest:  go some place you haven’t been before.  The only catch there is that, after you’ve been to enough places, you might start to think they look alike.  Especially if you haven’t changed much since the last time you were there.  That can make everything seem the same – which can get pretty boring, if you let it._

 _Another way is to go some place you’ve already been, but with someone who’s never seen it.  You do that, and it can be like seeing it new all over again, only better._

 _And another way is to go back to a place you’ve seen before, after something’s happened to change you._

 

MacGyver and Sam hadn’t been going in any particular direction, or trying to get there at any particular time.  It wasn’t actually the first time Mac had ever cut loose like this – by his count, it was the third at least – but the other two times he’d been this completely rootless, he’d had Jack Dalton for company.  And that was like casting off from shore and setting sail with a cast-iron boat anchor for a hat.  The guy took too much looking after.

This was more like hang gliding.

They’d tried actual hang gliding, in fact, when they passed through Colorado in July, heading north.  Sam hadn’t been as enthusiastic as Mac had hoped.  It wasn’t the height – that really _didn’t_ bother him – it was the fact that he couldn’t take pictures.  And there wasn’t much to photograph anyway . . . or so Mac thought, until Sam contrived a camera mount for his own hang glider and took pictures of his father in flight.  Mac still felt his neck redden every time he thought of it – although he also felt himself glowing with even more pride than embarrassment.

Even more surprising had been how embarrassed Sam had been when Mac admired the improvised camera mount.  He’d knocked it together during breakfast that morning in camp, mostly out of  pieces of kindling, duct tape, and a sardine can, and he could already see where it could be improved.

“You’re kidding, right?  I mean, it’s just, you know, kinda cobbled together . . . ”

“Well, yeah.  And it works!”  Mac studied Sam’s face.  “C’mon, Sam, spill.  You said you’ve always done stuff like this.”

“Well, yeah, but no-one ever really noticed it before!”  Sam had turned crimson.  “Or when they did, they acted like it was really weird.  Like I wasn’t screwed together too tight myself.  And you . . . I guess you do this kind of stuff all the time.  People even expect you to do it.”

“Well, yeah . . . at Phoenix, they started calling them ‘MacGyverisms’ years ago.  Kinda silly.  Sometimes I’ll be in the middle of something there, and I’ll hear someone say, ‘Wow, you MacGyvered that pretty good’ – and I’ll realise they weren’t even talking to me.  Or about me.”

Sam had been studying his father’s face with an unreadable expression.  Suddenly, Mac found himself engulfed in a clumsy but enthusiastic hug.  He squeezed back, smelling sunlight and fresh high mountain air in Sam’s hair, feeling a hint of dampness where his son’s face was pressed against his neck.  There was a moment of bitter regret for the years that he’d missed – he could have been getting hugs like this all along, or at least until adolescence made Sam too self-conscious for affection – but it was better to appreciate the sudden, unexpected gift of fatherhood, and not waste time being angry over when and how it had been given.

 

* * *

 

In late August, they were still in the Rockies, where they’d found some good camping spots in the national forest near the Grand Tetons.  They’d explored Yellowstone already, but it seemed more comfortable now to shun the main tourist areas and linger in the less-trafficked stretches of the national forest nearby.  Sam wasn’t thinking much about the past these days.  The present was far too vivid and distracting.

Mac was simply content to drift along from day to day, soaking up fresh air and wild country, feeling the hard edge of raw nature honing away the accumulated crust of living in the city for so long.  They had weathered a handful of brutal thunderstorms without too much difficulty, but in the higher altitudes the season was changing early.  Sam grumbled the first time they hit an alpine snow flurry – “It’s _August_!  You’re not supposed to get snow in _August_ , for god’s sake!”  But his bad mood evaporated when they encountered an entire hillside of aspen trees that had gone prematurely gold.  The early cold snap had triggered the first wave of autumn colour.

“Just wait till a little later in the season, “ Mac said.  “When Indian summer hits, we’ll get the full range of fall colours, and the sky’ll be this shade of blue that you just can’t believe.”

“Is it still okay to call it that?” Sam wondered.  “Or is that one of those things that’s actually kind of offensive?”

“I’m not sure,” Mac said absently.  He was working on a long straight branch from an aspen tree, peeling the bark and sharpening one end.  “But the first guy I ever heard use that term was full-blooded Native – Ojibway.  I figure if anyone could use it, he could.”

Sam had been studying the way the shadows from the different kinds of trees changed the colours of the rocks and earth around them.  He was still intent on mastering the new realm of photographic subject matter, avidly pursuing some personal vision of perfection of light and composition and timing.

Getting started in the brutally competitive world of photojournalism, he’d hardly ever thought about colour before.  Far more important was the instantaneous assessment of light and shadow, and all the gradations of tone between.  Most of the pictures he sold got printed in black and white anyway, and the admiration of his peers was reserved for the virtuosos of the greyscale world.

Now . . . ever since that fluke morning at Death Valley, when his father had waved at the impossible cascade of ephemeral colour and told him to ‘hurry up before that darn sun toasts it all’, Sam had spent most of his time feeling drunk on colour.  When they’d ventured above the snow line, he’d found himself focusing on the fine subtle shades of dark green and blue-white, instead of the high contrast between them.  And now they had backtracked from winter to fall again, and his head reeled with the effort of taking it all in.

He wasn’t chasing colour at the moment, though.  He was chasing birds.

That was another thing.  For years, wildlife was something you saw on TV, or at the movies, or in the cute-moment-of-urban-nature photo on page B-3 of the paper (page B-1, if you got a really good shot and the editor was feeling mellow that day).  Birds meant pigeons, sparrows, or crows, unless it meant some old lady’s pet canary.

Till now.  This afternoon . . . birds meant eagles.  _Bald eagles,_ for God’s sake.  _Real_ ones.

They hadn’t been going anywhere in particular that afternoon – they had decided, without discussion, that they liked their current campsite well enough to stay for another day, or maybe several, and with no mileage to cover or supplies to fetch, they’d gone rambling.  MacGyver had said something about edible plants, and had begun poking at the vegetation with his sharpened stick.  Sam hadn’t found the plants interesting visually – or in any other way, for that matter – but he was intrigued by the rock formations around them.  Over the last few days, they’d gradually been drifting eastwards through the forest, heading away from the jagged granite peaks of the Tetons.  As the terrain began to change, it was throwing new variations in colour at him before he’d gotten a grip on the previous palette.  He’d been studying the subtle rainbows in the stone face of the buttes that towered above them, picking his shots with care.  They were going to have to stock up on film again soon, at the rate he was going.

And then he’d seen the first eagle.

It should have looked like a clichéd parody of its own image, but the first impossible sight of that monster silhouette against the sky had scattered any notion he’d ever had of stock photos and generic Americana.  Somehow, he’d never really gotten how damned _huge_ the birds were.  They were the key predators in their personal realm, weren’t they?  How come no-one had ever pointed that out?

His father had grinned at Sam’s excitement and studied the wheeling bird for several moments – and then pointed with his stick, and there, like magic, was the second eagle.  And it was even _larger_.

“Prob’ly a mated pair,” Mac had said, not quite casually. “Chicks all fledged and flown the nest, and Mom and Dad are free to just hang out for a while before the season starts getting tough.”  He’d gone back to his digging, although he kept glancing up at the sky and smiling.

Sam clambered up onto a tumbled mass of rocks to try to get a better angle for shooting pictures, then headed over towards the cliff face of the nearest butte to see if he could pick up a little more altitude.  He was almost too excited to hold the camera steady.

Somehow, Sam had never felt enough of a connection to the rest of the world to care all that much about animals, although a nice cute picture of a puppy was usually a sure seller.  But now – his father seemed to be able to look at animals, plants, even rocks, and start talking as if they were all members of the family.  _For such a small family, we sure have a lot of relatives._

Sam scrambled partway up the slope and found a stable point where he could brace himself and shoot a few more frames.  Better.  Still not right, though.  There must be thousands, no, _millions_ of pictures of eagles out there.  Who was he to think he had anything to say about them that hadn’t been said already? – said in vivid colour and exquisite understanding by the long-standing masters of the field.

 _I didn’t come all this way to end up with a cheap postcard._   And yet . . .

The shoulders of the mountain were dappled with those insanely bright, impossibly early fall colours, a haze of gold with occasional glowing scarlet coals against the quiet, dignified, dark green of the fir.  Above, the incredible sky, a shade of blue so intense it was like getting stoned if you stared at it for too long.  And the wild, crazy reality of the birds, wheeling and dancing around each other, an aerial ballet of casual beauty, unmindful of any audience, thrown away on the wind.

If he didn’t take any pictures, no-one would ever know that this moment had existed.

He still didn’t have the right angle, though.  Sam slung the camera carefully over his back, and managed to scramble to a higher ledge with the help of some bushes that clung to the rock surface with spindly, tentative roots.  Pity they didn’t have the hang gliders with them – _that_ would be the right viewpoint for photos of the birds.  Although they were more than just birds, if he could just find an angle that would show it – they were the inevitable spark of life struck between sky and earth in this wild place.

There.  Perfect – he was finally up high enough that he could get the right angle of tree and rock and arching sky; and the eagles were still dancing for him, as if they’d been waiting while he found his place.  He forgot caution about the film and burned through most of the remaining roll.  Finally, the eagles ended the session, soaring away and fading into dark specks.  Sam’s eyes watered and his head swam, and it was several minutes before he blinked, drew a deep breath, and got ready to climb back down.

And realised he couldn’t scramble back the way he’d come.  Or any other way that he could see from his perch.

 _Aw, shit._   He mentally edited the thought to make sure the obscenity stayed unspoken.  _Crap._ _Well, I got up this far_ . . . and there was no way he could get back.  And that meant just one thing.

Sam tried to bury his face in the unyielding rock of the cliff.  Finally he steeled himself to the inevitable.

“Dad . . . _Dad! **Da - ad!!!**_ ”

The call echoed through the canyons, bounced off the stone faces of the buttes.  Mac had been absorbed in his hunt for plants, and hadn’t really noticed how long it had been since he’d last seen Sam.  He hadn’t been thinking of his son as someone who needed baby-sitting, and accordingly he hadn’t kept a mental tag on his location and movements.

 **  
_Sam . . ._   
**

MacGyver felt something deep inside him go icy cold, with a core that burned white hot.  It was only a few moments before he spotted the figure partway up the face of the butte; his eye picked out the track of the climb, and he saw the point where Sam had crossed a gap that couldn’t be retraced.

“Up here . . . I’m not hurt, calm down.  I’m fine.  Um, sort of.  I just – I can’t get back down.”  Sam tried to think of anything else to say.  _Sorry, Dad, your son’s a moron_ just wouldn’t come out.

“I got some real good pictures,” he finally blurted.

Mac wanted to storm furiously at Sam for being so careless, and at the same time he didn’t dare speak.  It wasn’t _that_ much of a mess; he could work his way up to the top of the butte above where Sam had gotten himself stranded.  That wouldn’t take more than half an hour.  Probably.  And they had rope, of course, plenty enough for the climb – and it was back at camp, at least an hour’s hike each way.  When they’d started on this particular ramble, they hadn’t planned on doing any real climbing.  They hadn’t planned at all. He made a mental calculation of the required time against the remaining daylight, factored in the temperature drop that would hit at sunset, and didn’t like the answer he got.

MacGyver breathed deeply, making sure he had a tight hold on himself before he called out again.

“Sam, were you paying attention back in Moab, when we went rock climbing?”

“Um . . . ”  The note of chagrin was very clear.  “Maybe not enough?”

“Yeah.  I’m pretty sure I told you then about one-way tickets.  In this kinda terrain, it’s real easy to get somewhere and find out you can’t get back.”

“Dad, can we save the ‘I told you so’ part till I’m back where I can roll my eyes safely?”

Mac shook his head, suddenly free of the panic and deep boiling anger.  _Mom, Dad, Harry – you all win.  You got me.  You musta hoped I’d find out for myself sooner or later._   He knew he was grinning, impossible as it seemed, as he called out his answer.

“Stop lookin’ down.  There’s a good chimney crack near you – looks like it’s about five feet above you and to your right.  You oughta be able to chimney up.”

“ _What_?  Since when is ‘chimney’ a verb?”

“Didja ever see ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’?”

“ _Dad_. . . this isn’t funny!”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Remember the Grinch climbin’ around on the inside of the chimneys?  It’s like that.  Plant your back against one wall and your feet against the other.  Walk up.  It’s really pretty easy – you’ll get the hang of it in no time.”  _I hope.  Oh, man, I hope._

“What about the camera?”

“Once you’re settled in the crack, just let it dangle under you as you climb.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Mac felt his grin broaden further, although his shoulders were already tightening in anticipation of having his nerves wrung to ribbons while Sam made his climb.  “Nope.”

 

Chimney climbing wasn’t all that fast at the best of times.  Mac knew that, and kept reminding himself of it every few moments, as he sweated out the long, slow process of Sam’s ascent.  Occasionally, he’d chime in with bland, cheerful encouragement, hoping his near-panic wasn’t showing in every syllable.

 _Is this anything like what Pete’s been goin’ through for years?  Geez, Pete.  How the heck did you survive it?_

 

Sam pulled himself the last few feet to the top and made sure the camera was undamaged – _Okay, so there’s a few scuff marks.  Not like it’s meant for a beauty contest._   He lay on his back, catching his breath, then stood up and waved at his father to show he was all right.  A few gestures confirmed that Sam would work his way down by the butte’s gentler, tumbled southern slope, and Mac would meet him there.  Sam hoped he’d be past being mad by then.

 _Those pictures had better be worth it . . ._ but in his heart, he already knew they would be.  Somewhere on that roll was at least one shot that would be pure magic.  And if his father didn’t understand that . . . but Sam was equally certain that he would.  _Totally worth it._ He grinned to himself as he turned away from the cliff edge.

He didn’t actually jump back and yell in alarm, but it was close, and it would probably have meant a bad fall after all that effort, which would really have been unfair.

Sam was face to face with a young man – no, a kid, a bit younger than himself, although he was taller – dark-haired and dark-eyed, with hollow cheeks and a beaky nose, dressed in ratty jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, regarding him with an enigmatic expression.  _Where the hell did you come from?_   He cleared his throat and found something less rude to say instead.  “Hi.”

“What are you doing here?”  The boy’s voice was deeper than Sam had expected.

“Nothing much – we’ve been camping is all.”  There was a faint nod in reply.  “My name’s Sam.”

“Joseph.”  He didn’t offer a hand, but it didn’t seem unwelcoming; just not necessary.  “That your father down there?”

“Yeah.”  Sam couldn’t quite keep the wince off his face.  The boy must have seen the whole humiliating episode.

“Is he mad at you?  If he’s gonna beat you, I’ll help you hide.”

Sam looked at Joseph with a confused frown.  “No, of course not.  But, um, thanks anyway.”

“You were looking for something when you started that climb.”  The remark should have seemed abrupt and out of context, but somehow it didn’t.

“Well, yeah.  I needed to see the eagles.”  _Did that sound as dumb as I think it did?_

Apparently not.  The boy nodded his head, a single firm chop of the chin.  Then he turned and pointed.  “There’s a good clean path back down over there – you see where that split boulder is leaning over to look across the canyon?”

“Um, thanks . . . ”  Sam wasn’t looking at anything but Joseph’s face.  When he’d turned to point, the sun had fallen on the shadowed left side and the black eye had become fully visible, along with the mottled bruises that marred cheek and jaw.

“Take you maybe ten minutes to get down again,” Joseph continued, ignoring Sam’s stare.  “No sweat.”

Sam turned to look where Joseph indicated.  When he turned back again, the boy was gone.

 

~

 

 _I’m not used to being with someone a lot of the time.  I always figured I’d be on my own for a long time, maybe always._

 _I sure never expected to end up fighting with my father over who was going to sleep on the couch.  (I won.)_

 _It’s not that I feel like I’m lonely.  But most of my life, I’ve been in motion, and it’s easier to move when you aren’t crowded.  My ‘uncles’ have never crowded me – but they’re a lot older than me, way older than my mom would’ve been._

 _So being with Dad so much, for all this time – I’d’ve expected I’d get jumpy, and that we’d be snapping at each other by now.  I figure we’d get on each other’s nerves, under each other’s skin.  I’ve known this man for all of what, four months?_

 _Well, he hasn’t exactly gotten under my skin.  And my nerves are doing fine._

 _My . . . well, my heart . . . that’s something else._

 


	3. Treading Water

 

 **_Three: Treading Water_ **

_  
_

_I had missed a lot of Sam’s life.  Most of that hurt.  Some of it hurt real bad.  But I have to be honest:  some of it was worth missing.  We got to skip the part of him knowing everything and me knowing nothing – I don’t think I’d’ve handled that real well.  I never had to hear him tell me, well, the kind of things some of the Challenger kids say about their dads.  I got to skip the adolescent anguish, the silent sulks and petty secrecy, the mistrust that yawns in a kid’s mind when he starts to push away from childhood._

 _Me, I was pretty good about telling my mom stuff . . . if it was important enough . . . and not too important . . . well, maybe I wasn’t all that good about it after all.  But Sam and I skipped the whole business of not being able to talk to each other at all._

 _It’s not that we started confiding everything right off the bat.  But in the first weeks after we found each other, while I was laid up with a busted arm and we were all trying to figure out what came next, since there was so much to find out about each other, we pretty much started out by being able to talk.  And we worked out that we didn’t have to worry too much about what we said.  Except for the cussing, that is – Sam kinda had a mouth on him, and I didn’t have an ear to match._

 _So he told me, right off, about the mysterious appearing and disappearing kid up on the butte.  Which was good, ’cause I’d’ve been pretty jumpy about being shadowed for the next three days, up there in the back country, if I hadn’t figured out who it was._

 _This far away from anyone else, you have to pay attention to who your neighbours are._

 

 

“I don’t get it.”

MacGyver looked up where he was squatting beside the firepit, laying a new fire to be ready for nightfall.  Their trip into town for supplies and mail had gone quicker than expected, but it had still taken several hours, and he had insisted that they pack up the campsite completely before they’d left that morning.  There was a lot to do before they could kick back and let the day end at its own pace.  “Don’t get what?”

“Why’d we come back to the same campsite?”  Sam was unloading supplies from his Honda – mostly groceries and a new supply of film, plus the special package from Willis that had been waiting for them courtesy of General Delivery.  “I mean, it’s nice – with the firepit and everything, obviously it’s been used before – but you haven’t said why.”

His father looked enigmatic, and cocked his head.  After a moment, Sam turned towards the Forest Service road they’d just retraced.  He’d heard it too:  the approaching roar of another motorcycle making its way up the long, rough climb.

Sam looked at Mac again.  “We were followed?”

“I’m not completely sure.”  MacGyver rose to his feet.  “I wanted to come back here anyway.  I only noticed them about ten miles back.”

“Okay, why _did_ we come back here?  You had a reason, I know it.”

“Tell ya later – company’s comin’.”

Sam frowned, listening.  “Two of ‘em.”

“Yeah, and at least one of them isn’t much of a mechanic.”  Sam grinned in spite of himself at the look on Mac’s face.  They could both hear the distinctive clattering sound of abused valves in an ill-maintained engine.

The two arrivals appeared from behind the screen of trees by the road, and pulled their cycles to the edge of the clearing Mac and Sam had been using as a campsite.  As they swung off the bikes, Mac pulled his aviator glasses out of his pocket and put them on, strolled partway over towards the newcomers and stopped a short distance away, his thumbs hooked into his jeans pockets as he watched the riders dismount.  Two young men, dark-haired and helmetless.  The taller of the two, blank-faced and stolidly muscular, was wearing a faded denim jacket and a ratty baseball cap; his longer-haired companion wore a black leather jacket with elaborate beadwork on the back and heavily fringed shoulders that didn’t quite fit him.  Both wore sunglasses and cowboy boots, and were dappled in road dust.

Both stopped first to examine Mac and Sam’s motorcycles, studying the latter in particular with a closeness that made Sam bristle.  _If I had a sister, and they looked at her the way they just looked at my bike, I’d take ‘em apart._   Every penny from two full years of freelance work had gone into buying and fitting out that bike; his ‘uncles’ had wanted to contribute, but he’d turned them down flat.  Achieving the bike had meant he was free to hit the road, free to head for the Pacific and try to reach China.  It had been that freedom that had brought him his father.

MacGyver continued to stand easily, studying them with matter-of-fact calm.  As the silence stretched out, they grew fidgety, as if they had expected him to speak already.  Finally the taller hulk blurted out, “Whatcha doin’ here?”

His friend glared at him and broke in, “What Cooper here _means_ is, we just thought we’d stop by and say hi.  Where you from?”

Mac took his shades off and studied them both for another long moment before he answered.  When he spoke, his reply was a long Minnesota drawl, so exaggerated that Sam had to fight the urge to laugh.  “Nice t’meetcha, boys.  We’re from up north, and we’re just hangin’ out for a spell.  I’m Mac, and this is Sam.”  He continued to examine them thoughtfully – they were both younger than he’d thought at first; he was pretty sure Cooper was close to Sam’s age, and his friend even younger.  _Local high school kids?  Of course, ‘local’ can mean a hundred miles around here . . ._

Sam had been hanging back by the firepit, watching closely.  The tough in the leather jacket nodded at both of them, eyeing Sam narrowly.  “I’m called Wyo, and this here’s Cooper.”

Mac nodded, with a smile that didn’t get anywhere near his eyes.  “So whatcha doin’ up here, boys?”

He wasn’t surprised when Wyo ignored the question.  “How long you two been camping up here?”

“A few days.”

“You seen a girl hanging around anywhere?”

“A girl?”

“Yeah.  She’s . . . ”  He glanced at Cooper as if deciding on a line to spin.  “She’s a runaway.  Her family’s pretty worried about her.  They think she might’ve come up here.”

“Pretty funny place for a runaway to go.”  Mac looked around at the towering trees, and the line of sharp-toothed granite peaks to the west of them that were already beginning to cast long afternoon shadows.

“Yeah, well, she’s not too right in the head, y’know what I mean?”

“Uh, nooo.  Whaddya mean?”  The drawl was heavier than ever.

Wyo and Cooper looked at each other, but couldn’t find an answer.

Mac put his shades back on.  “Well, we’ll keep an eye out.  What’s her name?”

Sam broke in.  Mac recognised his journalist voice.  “What’s she look like?  How old is she?”

The inquiry seemed to catch them off guard.  Cooper reddened; Mac noticed he seemed to be sweating heavily.  “You sure ask a lotta questions.”

Wyo laid a hand on his arm.  “Hey, easy, man.  No reason they shouldn’t.”  He turned to Mac, as if Sam hadn’t spoken.  “Her name’s Sara Dennison.  She’s sixteen.”

“Hair colour?  Eyes?”  Sam pressed.  “How was she dressed the last time she was seen?”

“She’s from the Rez, man.  Whaddya think she looks like?”  Wyo eyed Sam with dislike.

Cooper licked his lips and scowled.  “She’s my girlfriend, man.  I’m worried about her.  It ain’t like her to run off.”

“Your girlfriend ran off?”  Mac’s eyes narrowed behind his shades.  Cooper bristled.

“It ain’t like that – ”

“Like what?”

“She didn’t run out on me!”

“You seem pretty sure of that.  Maybe she went home to her mother – did you check?”

Wyo threw back his head and laughed.  “Yeah, like she would!  Like her mom would notice!”

Cooper turned to glare at Wyo, who merely smirked.

“She’d notice if Sara brought home a few bottles, maybe.  The return of the prodigal.”

“You shut the fuck up, Wyo.  It ain’t funny.”

“No, it ain’t.”  Wyo grinned at Cooper, then turned back to Mac.  “You seen anyone else, maybe?”

Mac didn’t like the way the boy’s eyes glinted as he asked.  He shrugged elaborately.  “Nope, haven’t seen anyone at all. ‘Cept you, of course.”

Sam had tensed inside at the question, wondering if his father had caught the false note as well.  He swallowed a grin at Mac’s answer, so honest and so deceitful.  After all, his father hadn’t actually _seen_ Joseph – and none of them were expecting Sam to say anything different.  Or at all.

Wyo was looking around the campsite, making a point of ignoring Sam.  “So.  You been up here a few days?  You gonna offer us a little hospitality, maybe?  You got any beer?”

“Nope.”  Mac drawled the word out.

“No beer?  You out camping and you ain’t got any beer?”

“Nope.”

Cooper sniffed.  “Don’ tell me you doin’ that clean-and-sober shit, man.”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?” Wyo snapped.

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”  Sam could hear the laughter under the bland tone in his father’s voice.

Wyo was still peering around the campsite, as if he expected to spot a beer supply hiding behind a rock.  “Okay, no beer.”

“You got any money?”  Cooper broke in.  He had crossed his arms over his massive chest and was studying Mac as if trying to guess his fighting weight.

MacGyver slowly removed his sunglasses again, meeting first Cooper’s gaze, then Wyo’s.  He didn’t answer, and his expression remained light and neutral, but the air crackled.

Wyo laughed nervously and elbowed Cooper.  “Ha ha.  Joke, man.  Just a joke.”

“Yeah, sure,” Mac said pleasantly.  “I can tell your buddy’s a real funny guy.”  He replaced his shades.

The two toughs retreated to their motorcycles, not quite scrambling.  Wyo looked as if he’d like to finish off with a really good parting shot, but he came up blank.  The two bikes roared away, farther up into the hills.

Sam and Mac didn’t stir until the sound of the clattering engine had faded away, and even the echoes were gone.  Sam glanced at his father.  “What the hell was that all about?  Why’re you looking like that?”

Mac was screwing up his face as if he’d smelled something rotting.  “I’m not sure . . . I think we better shift camp after all.  I don’t like the idea of them knowing where to find us.”  MacGyver turned towards the still forest and raised his voice.  “Are you gonna come along, or just watch while we do it?”

His question rang off the trunks of the trees.  After a moment, there was a stirring in the underbrush.  Joseph walked out into the clearing.

“How long you known I was there?”

“Well, heck, you’ve been trailin’ us off and on ever since Sam’s adventure on the cliffs.”

The boy grinned, bright teeth in his tanned face.  The bruises had faded to yellow-and-green smears.  “When you pulled outta here this morning, I thought you’d gone on down the road.  Why’d you come back here?”

“Didn’t want to miss the chance of meetin’ you.”  Mac studied the newcomer.  “So you’re Joseph.  You got a last name?”

“Not up here.”

“Good enough.  I’m MacGyver, and you’ve already met Sam.”

“Your son.”

“Yup.”  The admission came more easily now, although Mac’s stomach still tended to flip at the word.

“Who you don’t beat.”

“Well, he beats me at pinball, but I’m gettin’ better.  I beat him at eight-ball.”

“You handled those two guys pretty well.”  Joseph nodded towards where the two motorcycles had vanished.

MacGyver shrugged and smiled.  “I try to get along with all my relations.”

Sam felt, rather than saw, the spark that snapped between the two.  Something had been communicated, but he had no idea what it was.  Joseph didn’t look pleased – he looked almost hostile.

“You tryin’ to make a claim?  Or are you just another wannabe?”

“I’m not claimin’ anything.  And I don’t especially want to be anything.”  Mac glanced at Sam.  “ ‘Cept for what I am now.”

Sam had already been smiling to himself as he began packing up – not that there was a lot to pack; from the start, they’d made a point of traveling light and packing light.  At his father’s comment, his smile had deepened, but at the same time he felt himself reddening and hoped Joseph wasn’t looking in his direction.

MacGyver looked around the campsite, assessing what they needed to do and how quickly they could be on the move again.  Although they weren’t packing a tent, he had woven a shelter of pine boughs; he decided to leave it up, although he couldn’t keep from hoping Wyo and Cooper wouldn’t end up making use of it.  _Giving comfort to the enemy . . ._ _okay, maybe they aren’t exactly enemies.  Maybe.  But still._   He looked at Joseph again as he started on the bedrolls.

“How long you been up here?”

“A week or so, I guess.”  The boy studied MacGyver with narrowed eyes, as if expecting him to be smiling.  “And don’t make any cracks about Indian time, okay?  I _know_ what day it is.  Trust me.”

Mac held up his hands with an gesture of innocence.  “Hey, no problem.  We’re gonna need to find another place to camp – you know this area pretty well, don’t you?”

“Been coming up here all my life.”

“Is this your campsite?  I hope Sam and I haven’t been in your space . . . ”

“No, it’s all right.”  Some of the edgy defensiveness had seeped out of Joseph’s stance.  “Yeah, it’s one of them.  My sister and I camp here when we can.  It’s . . . it’s nice and quiet up here.  Nobody bothers us.  Not usually, anyway.”

Sam was stowing his own gear and the supplies they’d bought in town, and making sure his camera was safely put away.  As he worked, he was enjoying another round of the almost magical effect his father had on people.  _He’d’ve made a good journalist – people spend five minutes with him and they start spilling stories_.  The first couple of times, when having his father around was still new and almost raw, he’d found it annoying, even intrusive.  By now, it was something he looked forward to watching.

Mac squatted by the firepit to pull apart the half-laid and unlit fire.  He didn’t look up at Joseph as he continued.  “So whatcha doin’ up here on your own?  I’m pretty sure you’re not out here doing a vision quest.”

Joseph snorted.  “Gimme a break, man.  Nobody does that kind of stuff any more.”

“Kind of a shame.”  MacGyver rose from beside the firepit and took the bedrolls over to the bikes, where Sam was trying to find a good spot for the new supply of film.  They had shipped off the exposed rolls that morning, entrusting Sam’s hard-won prizes to a friend of Mac’s in Billings.

“Was it Cooper who gave you the black eye?” Sam asked as he finished strapping down the last of his gear.

Joseph shrugged.  “Naw, that was Wyo.”

Mac raised an eyebrow at Joseph’s casual tone.

“Wyo’s my cousin, man.  He’s been beating me up for years.”

“Your cousin, huh?  I don’t suppose that was your jacket that he’s wearing.”

Joseph’s casual air thinned.  He eyed Mac warily as he nodded.  “How’d you . . . ”

“The jacket doesn’t fit him.  You’re taller than he is.  And he hasn’t been wearing it for long; it’s still holding the memory of a different shape.”  Mac gave an experimental tug to the lashings on his own gear.  “And it’s kinda hard to believe you’d come up into the mountains without a jacket, even in August.  Not when you’ve been up here before and know what you’re doing.”

“Are those two always this bad – I mean, do they always treat you like that?” Sam asked.

“Naw, not usually.  This time they figured they’d make applesauce.  It took me a while to get away.”

“Applesau – oh, geez.”  MacGyver winced.  “When you pound an apple into mush?”

Joseph nodded.  Sam looked puzzled.  “ ‘Apple’?”

“Red on the outside, white on the inside,” Joseph drawled.  “Least that’s what they figure.”

“Any particular reason?”  Sam’s ears perked up at the faint drawl in his father’s voice.  _What’re you fishing for, Dad?_

His father’s instincts were dead on the mark again.  Joseph hunched his shoulders and scuffed a shoe on the ground.  “They don’t like it when anybody tries to leave the Rez, man.  They’re never gonna get anywhere themselves, so they don’t want anyone else to go away either.  Specially not . . . ”  He shrugged again.

“Lemme guess.  Not when it means succeeding in the white man’s world.”

Joseph nodded.

“You headed for college then, right?  Scholarship?  Must be on a scholarship – and last I heard, even a place the size of the Wind River Reservation doesn’t exactly have great schools.  They get starved for funding even worse than the rest of the state.  You musta bootstrapped yourself all the way through school.”

Joseph looked embarrassed.  “It coulda been worse.  You ever heard of an outfit called the Phoenix Foundation?”

“Um, yeah . . . ”

Sam swallowed a grin, watching his father redden slightly.  _Your turn, Dad._

“They’re way out in California, but they got this real cool program going – you just send in one application, and they turn around and send it out to a whole buncha different places.  Colleges, nonprofits, state programs, government programs, anyone who’s got anything that might help.  And they put these big ads in all the newspapers – ‘Apply Now, what’ve you got to lose?’ ”  Joseph was looking off into the sky, gesturing as if the words had been emblazoned on a giant banner across the sky.

“I had three different teachers all hand me copies of that ad the day it came out.  And man, it was so _easy_ getting hold of the Phoenix people – they had a phone number you could _call_ , and a real person answered it.  Right away.  I got the application packet in the mail three days later . . . no messing around claiming they couldn’t find the zip code, or that the address didn’t exist.  And it didn’t even suck filling it out.”

MacGyver had caught Sam’s eye, and the message was as clear as if he’d shouted it.  _Don’t you dare tell him I worked for them._  Sam was tempted, but he nodded his acquiescence.  _But you owe me one, Dad._

“And when the acceptance came, it was just crazy, man.  I was a hero.  My mom sobered up for two whole days.  And Wyo – ”  Joseph’s enthusiasm dimmed in an instant.  “He was real clear.  He said he’d kill me if I tried to leave.”

“So when it got to be almost time to go, you came up here to hide out.”  Mac’s tone made it a statement, not a question.

“Yeah.  I tried using one of the campsites where my sister and I usually stay, but they caught up with me . . . I got away that time, but I figured it’d be better if I stayed farther back in the bush after that.”

Sam had been listening intently but unobtrusively, waiting for an opening.  “That’s right – you said you used to camp here, in this spot.  With your sister.  I don’t suppose her name is Sara?”

The easy air evaporated in an instant.  Joseph turned on Sam in alarm.  “How could you know about her?  I never said anything . . . ”

“Wyo and Cooper were asking about her,” MacGyver explained quickly.  “Didn’t you hear them?  I thought you were listening.”

“I couldn’t hear anything at first – I was too far away.  I had to get closer.  They were asking about Sara?”  The impassive mask had slipped completely; the boy’s eyes were wide with genuine alarm.

“They said she’s missing,” Mac replied. “They said they were looking for her – claimed she’s a runaway.”

“And Cooper claimed she’s his girlfriend,” Sam added.

Joseph’s face went black with rage.  “That lying _creep_ _!_ ”

“No way, huh?”

“He’s Arapaho.  We’re Shoshone.  She - she wouldn’t let him touch her, man.”  His voice was firm, but his face held a faint shadow, as if he wasn’t completely convinced.  “I gotta go.  I gotta find her . . . ” he looked around wildly.

Sam watched it happen:  there was no shift, no change to his father’s face, and that was the whole point.  _We’re going to do something about this.  Really.  Not just watch it go by and wonder how the story ends . . ._   MacGyver wasn’t doing anything unusual as far as he was concerned; he was simply there to help, and he assumed that the help would be accepted.  _Does he have any idea that the rest of the world doesn’t do it that way?  If he knew, would it still work?  
_

 _And could I do it like that myself, if someone needed me?_

“We know she didn’t come here.  Where else would she go?”  Mac’s voice was firm and decisive.  “You okay riding pillion?  We can check more places quicker if we can take the bikes.”

“I know a few places – ” Joseph began cautiously.

“Only a few?”

“Okay, several.  They aren’t all on the roads, though . . . ”  He looked at the motorcycles, his face clouded and doubtful.

“Sam’s stuck keepin’ that rocket of his on the road, but I’ve got a bit more leeway.  Just keep us away from any real big rocks, okay?”

Sam tried not to wince at the thought.  His father’s Yamaha had only slightly better clearance than his own Honda – he’d been leery of the rough unpredictable surfaces of the Forest Service roads, although the wild beauty of the back country made almost any risk seem worth it.  And he’d learned a lot about how much he could get his bike to do some things he wouldn’t have expected.  But neither bike had ever been intended for off-roading.  And there was another, bigger threat that his father seemed to have forgotten.

“What if we run into Wyo and Cooper again?”

“Good point.”  Mac chewed thoughtfully on his lip.  “Joseph, just what kinda drugs are those two doing?”  Both Sam and Joseph blinked at him in surprise.  “It’s PCP, right?  Are they dipping?”

“How’d you guess, man?”

“I was hopin’ you’d tell me I’d guessed wrong.  When Cooper was tryin’ to stare me down, his eyes kept jittering.  And that you saw how he was sweating, and the flushed skin and dry mouth – he kept lickin’ his lips, and it wasn’t because he wanted a beer.”  MacGyver’s face was screwed up with disgust.  Sam thought about the kids he’d met at the Challenger’s Club – his father’s protegés – and a guy he’d known in Chicago who’d gone psycho from angel dust.  And LA had been much harder hit by the dust craze.

“Most folks wouldn’t recognise it,” Joseph was saying.

“Are they heavy users?”

“Wyo not so much – he deals.  He didn’t used to use at all, but it’s gotten real bad the last few months.  Cooper used to deal too, till he turned into too much of a druggie himself.  Wyo kinda took over his territory.”

“Looks like he took over his whole brain,” Sam said dryly.  “If that’s saying much.”

“Wasn’t a lot to take over by then.”  Joseph swallowed nervously.  “I’m not gonna lie to you.  Cooper’s batshit crazy.  And Wyo – he’s got a gun on him, man.  He was gonna fill me full of holes once he got my jacket off – he said he didn’t want to ruin a good jacket.  If we run into them . . . ”

“With a little luck, we won’t.”  Mac lifted his helmet from where it sat on the backrest and held it out to Joseph.

Joseph’s sigh as he took the helmet was weighted down with all the tired cynicism of an old man.  “It won’t just be our luck.  It’s Sara’s luck – and she’s never been lucky in her whole life.  Bad luck since before she was even born.”

This time, there _was_ a change in Mac’s face; Sam saw the realisation wash across him, as stark as the sudden fall of a black shadow on a sunny day.  MacGyver looked over at where Sam had straddled his bike and was beginning to don his own helmet, and saw him looking back. 

Sam felt the blood drain out of him as if a giant plug had been yanked out of a pipe, leaving him icy and dazed in spite of the bright sunlight that hit so much harder at this altitude.  They’d had the same thought at the same time, only in opposite directions.  Sam saw MacGyver wanting to back out – not for his own sake, not because it was dangerous for himself, but because of the danger to Sam.  And Sam was momentarily paralysed at the vision of his father tangling with some dust-crazed kid with a gun.

 _If I weren’t here, he wouldn’t have hesitated.  Not when someone needs help._   Sam thought about the runaway they’d met just outside Salt Lake City, and the Phoenix operative Mac had sent for to get the girl to safety.  The man had been surprised – no, astonished – when MacGyver hadn’t stayed around to join in the mop-up.

Even if Sam jumped on his bike right this minute, opened the throttle and headed for the horizon – even if he had _wanted_ to do just that . . . after all the effort of staying light on their gear, they weren’t traveling light at all.  Neither of them would ever really be able to travel light any more.

Sam set his jaw and almost slammed his helmet onto his head.  “C’mon.  We need to find your sister before those two crazies do.”

“You sure about this?  You gotta be some kind of crazy yourself to take those bikes into the back country, you know – ”

MacGyver broke in, and there was a deep note of pride and laughter under his words as he straddled his motorcycle.  “Sam was already crazy enough once to take that bike of his through a window.”

“He did that?”

“He sure did.  I was riding behind him on the same bike.”

“Okay, so you’re both crazy.  Prob’ly crazy enough to be Indians.”  Joseph clambered on behind MacGyver.  “All right, man.  Hi-yo Silver.”

 

 _~_

 

 _It’s been pretty easy, getting people to talk about my dad.  It’s been a little harder believing some of the stories, of course._

 _What’s been hardest is thinking about some of them.  I mean, I only just found him.  How many times did he almost get himself killed while I was kicking the legs of my desk in high school?_

 _Uncle Theo joshes me about being visually oriented – he’s a senior correspondent, and his whole life has been about words.  As for me, well . . . since the day Mom first put her camera into my hands and showed me how to work the f-stop and the focus and the zoom, I’ve kind of got used to watching the world from a distance.  It’s not that I don’t care about what’s going on – I do . . . sometimes way too much . . . it’s just that a lot of the time, I feel like a spectator._

 _Uncle Roddie says that’s why I make a good journalist.  But sometimes I wonder if I’m giving up something that I ought to keep hold of._

 _Dad and I went swimming in the Pacific the first week he had the cast off his arm, and I could have counted the gunshot scars on him, except I couldn’t stand to look at them.  By then, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking what it would have meant if I’d never known him at all._

 _And since then, I have to fight not to be mad at Mom for staying away.  Keeping us both away.  Not telling him about me, or me about him._

 _Mom never did tell me much about him . . . sometimes I’d decide that she was right, and why should I want to know about someone who wasn’t even there?  And sometimes I really wanted to know more, and I’d push her, and she’d talk, a little._

 _I think she knew – knew he was doing a lot of dangerous stuff, knew he could get killed any day.  I think that’s part of why she kept away.  Not just because she didn’t want to see him come home with a bullet in him . . . I think she figured that, if he had a family, he’d stop doing the risky stuff – and that would mean he’d stop trying to help people.  And then he’d really start to die, inside._

 _And now that I know all that, how the hell am I supposed to live with it?_

 

 _  
_


	4. Hitting the Dirt

 

 _**Four: Hitting the Dirt** _

 

 _A friend of mine, Larry Whitecloud – enrolled Lakota – has this prank he likes to play on new hires at Phoenix.  He’s been working with us on indigenous rights issues the last couple of years, and he’s real good – someone on the staff dubbed him Legal Eagle – but he has this real coyote sense of humour.  He puts on what he calls his ‘inscrutable shaman’ routine and teaches them a couple of phrases that he tells them are old Indian blessings.  A week or so later, they’ll try to greet him with their shiny new Indian catchphrase, and he acts horrified, ‘cause what he actually taught them was some really inventive obscenity._

 _Thanks to Whitecloud, I can recognise cussing in Lakota, Apache, and two other Native languages._

 

Joseph wasn’t swearing in Shoshone; the string of foul language he was muttering under his breath was plain blunt Anglo-Saxon.

“ . . . it figures.  It just _figures_.  Sara’s luck was always fucked up . . . ”

They were crouched behind a thin screen of pine boughs, looking down from the end of a low butte onto another of Joseph’s pet camping spots.  It was nearly sunset already; they’d been trading off between sweeping the roads and looping off onto side trails, covering plenty of ground even though Mac insisted on rendezvousing with Sam after each new sweep.

When Joseph had remembered this site and suggested checking it, Mac had turned cautious:  if Wyo and Cooper knew of one campsite, they could easily know others.  It had been a job getting the Yamaha up the scraggly dirt trail to this spot, but the rise of the butte had blocked the sound of the motorcycle engine – he hoped – and the caution had paid off.

Cooper was squatting beside a stone-circled firepit, apparently trying to get a haphazard pile of leaves, pine needles and sticks to catch and hold a flame from a lighter.  Wyo was perched on a fallen log.  Mac couldn’t smell the particular smoke from whatever he held to his mouth, but he was sure it wasn’t tobacco.

They could see Sara Dennison clearly from their vantage point.  She was lying not far away, curled up in a huddle on the bare ground.  She had been dressed like her brother, in a plaid flannel shirt and jeans; the shreds of her clothing were visible scraps of colour on the dark earth.  Mac imagined he could hear her whimpering.  _At least she’s still alive._

“I bet they came right here and waited for her . . . ”  Joseph moaned.  “Shit.  _Shit._   They didn’t have to do it like that . . . ”  He saw MacGyver looking at him.

“You said she wouldn’t let them touch her.”

Joseph gave a faint shrug.  “So I lied.  Sara . . . she’s always, well, she started having boyfriends real young, y’know?  She wanted, I dunno, closeness.  Comfort.  She didn’t care how.”  He ran a dirt-streaked hand across his eyes, smearing the tears.

“C’mon.”  Mac wriggled back from the edge.  “We gotta get her away from them before they do anything else.”

Joseph blinked at him.  “You’ll still . . . you – even now, knowing – but they’re fucking _crazy!_   Why do you even _care_ what one Indian does to another?”

“Don’t you?”  Mac jerked his head.  “C’mon.  We gotta get back down to the road before Sam comes along . . . ”  He felt his stomach clench.  _Oh, god.  Sam.  If Sam comes up that road before we can head him off . . . he could run right into them . . ._

Joseph seemed to be following his thoughts.  “There’s a shortcut, but it’s kinda steep – ”

“Any big rocks?”

“Naw, just dirt.”

“Let’s go.”  Mac swung onto his bike, swung it around to face down the careening trail down from the butte.  He felt the teeth of the old fear sink into his mind, tightening his shoulders as he faced the drop.  But it was different somehow; with Sam off somewhere at the bottom of that trail, possibly riding into unrecognised danger, the teeth seemed blunter, the looming cloud somehow distant.

Pete had tried to call him on it once – _You can’t really be afraid of heights, MacGyver; look at everything you do!  Rock climbing, hang gliding, even skydiving – okay, so you don’t like small aircraft all that much, but who does? _ Mac hadn’t been able to explain it, to Pete or even to himself:  the fascination that went with the fear, the ongoing game of double-dog-dare that drove him towards the heart of the terror.  He’d played chicken over and over with his nemesis, and it usually broke and ran before he did.  Usually.

This time, it didn’t even put up a struggle as he waited for Joseph to settle himself firmly behind, put the motorcycle in gear and charged at the downwards trail.

 

It was always exhilarating, when he threw himself off an edge like this, right into the face of his demons – or even when they weren’t there; skiing had the same rush, or racing, or getting that sudden mental click that told him he’d cracked something, broken into a secret that had been opaque the moment before.  As a kid, when he’d started learning to pick locks, there had been the delight at that audible click when he’d found the heart of the mechanism and persuaded it to play along for him.

Trees flashing past, the wind in his face going through rapid-fire changes of temperature as he urged the bike from shadow to sunlight.  His hair whipped out behind him; Joseph was clinging on behind, holding his position dead-centered on Mac’s back, swaying with him as the bike careened.  The wheels skidded and spun on the dirt of the trail, regained traction, lost and regained it again.  Only momentum and perfect balance – and luck – were keeping them upright.

The world was beautifully simple at these moments, with no room for anything but the moment.

Jospeh pressed on his shoulder and pointed ahead, where a smaller trail snaked away to the side.  As promised, it was mostly free of rocks, although a few pieces of gravel banged against the tailpipe and fairing.  He mentally promised his motorcycle a full round of TLC if it would just hold together through this one wild drop.

They almost came to grief when they finally reached the bottom and hit the firmer surface of the Forest Service road, the tires of the bike trying to leap sideways again before he straightened up and roared away back along the road.  And ahead of him, he could see the slanting sun glinting on the bronze of his son’s helmet as Sam approached them, safe for the moment from the threat just up the road.

 

* * *

 

They found a deep copse of dense fir where Sam’s bike could be concealed, invisible from anyone who might pass.  MacGyver took pains to hide their trail as they backtracked to the road.

Joseph was watching him with a sardonic expression.  “You know, _kemo sabe_ , just ‘cause Wyo’s an Indian doesn’t mean he could track a snail across a basketball court by the trail of slime.  Just who do you think’s going to come looking?”

Mac finished brushing out their tracks and pitched his makeshift broom of fir branches far off into the tangle of undergrowth on the opposite side of the road.  “You got any idea why those two are up here in the first place?”

Joseph shrugged.

“Me neither.  You think it was just to harass you?”

The boy shrugged again.  “I guess it’s a lot more effort than they’d usually make . . . when they found me – ”  He frowned.  “I didn’t think too much at the time, but they seemed kind of surprised.  Then they got mean.”

“And you said Wyo meant to kill you.  Is that usual for him?”

Mac glanced over at Sam, and found a confirmation in his face.  He wasn’t sure why he was so uneasy, but Sam’s instincts were just as much on edge.

Joseph was shaking his head.  “Of course not.  Shit, I didn’t even know Wyo packed a gun.  He didn’t use to.  His dad’s a total drunk, worse than my mom – he used to own a couple of guns for hunting, but he must’ve hocked them years ago.”

Mac nodded, almost absently.  “Can you ride a motorcycle?  By yourself, I mean?”  He recalled the casual expertise Joseph had shown riding behind him on that wild drop down the butte.

Joseph’s face twisted in a smirk that was half snarl.  “How do you think I got up here myself?  I didn’t turn into an eagle and fly, man.  Wyo took my bike along with my jacket.”

Sam nodded, his face lit with sudden understanding.  “Right – the one that didn’t sound like it had been treated like crap.  No wonder.”  His eyes gleamed.  “I don’t know about the jacket, but it seems to me we oughta be able to get your bike back as well as your sister.”

Joseph’s eyes lit up.  “You mean sneak up and steal it back?”  His face fell.  “What about Sara?”

“She’s probably gonna need medical attention,” Mac replied.  “How fast do you think you could reach the nearest hospital?”

“On my bike?”

“No.  Mine.”

“Shit.  Couple hours at least – we’re talking Lander, maybe even Riverton . . .”

“How about a police station?”  Mac looked sharply at Joseph.  “And _don’t_ tell me there’s no point in telling the cops.  Your sister deserves _something_ after all this.”

“Okay!  Okay . . . ”  he glanced from MacGyver to Sam.  “You’re going to have to back me up, you know.  The local cops don’t usually bother much with stuff on the Rez.  Not till someone gets shot.  Sometimes not even then.”

Mac dug into an inner pocket of his leather jacket and held out a card to Joseph.  “Don’t lose that.  I want it back.  But once you’re at the police station, if they give you any trouble, show’em the card.  If they still won’t buy it, call the number on the back.  Ask for a Mr. Pete Thornton, and tell him about how you met us.  That oughta do it.”  He privately hoped the Phoenix ID would carry enough authority, without the call.  _Pete’s got enough to worry about already . . . and so much for staying out of trouble!  But what’re we supposed to do?  Ignore it?  Watch it from a distance and take notes?_

Joseph frowned at the ID card MacGyver had given him.  “Wait a minute . . . the _Phoenix_ Foundation?  That’s the same guys who had the scholarship program!”

“Well, yeah, but we do some other stuff as well.”

“I guess.”  Joseph tucked the card into his jeans pocket.  “So you want me to take Sara back to town and get her help.  What about you?  You want me to send anyone?”

“Couldn’t hurt.”  Mac ran a hand through his hair.

“How’re we going to get her away from those two?  I mean, they’re probably blitzed out’ve their minds by now, but they’re still going to be watching!”

“Calm down.  We’re workin’ on it.”  MacGyver turned to Sam.

Sam handed his father the items he’d retrieved from his pack before they’d hidden their gear in the woods.  “We need to get them to split up . . . ”

“ . . . _and_ leave Sara unwatched.”  MacGyver bent his head over the package Willis had sent.  _Sorry, Willis._   “If we can distract them on _two_ fronts . . . ”

Sam pulled out the repair kit they’d bought in town earlier that day.  “I guess I’d better stop whining about that cracked fairing on my bike, huh?”  He grinned.  “Joseph, I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare key to your motorcycle?”

“Uh, no . . .”

“No problem.  I can deal with it.”  Sam began to shrug out of his leather jacket.  “We’re close enough to the same size.  Gimme your shirt.”

Mac’s eyes burned darkly as he studied Sam.  “You sure about this?”

Sam met his father’s eyes in a wordless answer.  MacGyver hesitated, then licked his lips and nodded, one terse jerk of the head – agreement, acceptance, support.  It probably wasn’t the last time the question would be asked – and it wouldn’t be the last time for the fear and worry that crowded behind it, trying to find an opening to somehow make Sam stop.  Not that he’d actually try to stop him, not when it came down to something like this.

 _Not unless I can come up with a better plan of my own._   And this time, he didn’t have one.  Not one that didn’t involve Sam.  _His plan or mine?_   There wasn’t really a dividing line.

 

* * *

 

Wyo sucked at his pipe, but it wasn’t helping.  His hands were still trembling – shit, the tremors were worse, if anything – and he wasn’t getting the usual sense of calm power and supreme control.  Just the opposite.  He could _feel_ things going wrong, getting screwed up even as he sat there.  Just for once in his life, he’d like things to go right, all the way through, no screw-ups.

You want a piece of the real action?  Better be nobody to see us, those guys had said.  No reservation telegraph this time, you got that?  And god damn it, they’d _tried_.  They’d caught that little twerp Joseph skulking around . . .  Wyo had planned on getting hold of both of them, him and his sister, scaring them good and proper and then letting them go.  It _would’ve_ worked, god damn it.  They’d’ve run screaming home and stayed quiet, and nobody would’ve known that anything else had happened.  And now . . .

It was the bitch’s own fault, anyway, what had happened to her.  Coop was getting harder to control these days; you never knew what the stuff was gonna do to him any more.  She really shouldn’t’ve slapped him like that – he was crazy enough already, and that just made him crazier.  Why’d that brain-dead bitch have to show up at all?  She was _always_ doing that, always hanging around, turning up at the worst possible time.  Yell at her to get lost, and she’d act like she didn’t understand.

And it was almost time now, finally.  Coop’s fire was burning at last, after damn near choking them both in sullen smoke.  Any time now – the sun had been eclipsed by the peaks long since, twilight settling into the valleys even while the upper bands of the mountains still lay in full sunlight, but now the sun really had set.  They’d be here any time now.  Finally.

He was so jumpy he was seeing things.  Hearing things.  Flashes of light in the woods, where the gathering dusk was getting thick enough to play tricks on the eyes.  No, _shit_ , there _was_ a light in the woods, flashing and clicking.  What the . . .

Cooper had finally gotten the fire going and had lumbered to his feet, staring.  “What the hell’s that?”

“How the hell should I know?  Go find out!  Shit, if that little twerp’s spying on us . . .”

Even as Cooper started towards the belt of pines, they heard the roar of a motorcycle engine firing up close to hand.  Wyo turned and swore.  The irregular, unpaved track of the Forest Service road ran a couple of dozen yards from the edge of the clearing; in the fading light, he could see where they’d left the bikes, could see the flash of a bright red flannel shirt and a dirty yellow baseball cap on the slender figure who had just kicked one of the bikes to life. The figure made a rude gesture and sped away.

“God _damn_ it!  When I catch that dweeb I swear I’ll nail his fucking red ass to a tree!” Wyo looked around in frustration, saw Cooper standing, gaping at him, indecisive.  “Coop, go find out what that fucking light is!”  Wyo ran to the road and swung himself onto the other bike – his own bike, the clapped-out piece of junk – Joseph’s bike was in way better shape, but his was bigger, more powerful.  He could catch him, as long as his own engine didn’t fall apart just yet.

The echoes of the roar of Wyo’s departure were still reverberating through the woods as MacGyver slipped out into the clearing and ran over to where Sara was still lying, too wrapped up in her own misery and bewildered pain to notice what was going on.  When he bent over her, she cringed away from him, flailing her arms and crying out.

“Hey, easy there, easy . . . don’t worry, honey, I’m here to help.  Hey, Sara, don’t be scared.  I’m here with Joseph . . . ”

Sara lowered her arms and stared at him with wide, terrified eyes like pools of ink.  Under the bruises, her face was pretty but her expression was vague; her features bore the unmistakable stamp of fetal alcohol syndrome.  When she heard Joseph’s name, she let out a wordless cry and wrapped her arms around Mac, burying her face in his shoulder.  Awkwardly, Mac slipped out of his jacket and wrapped it around her, covering up the rents in her clothing.  She was going to need some protection from the wind chill on the road.

After a few moments, she loosened her grip, but when MacGyver helped her to her feet, she swayed and clutched at him again.  He swung the girl up in his arms – she felt light as a feather – and hurried towards the road.  He didn’t know how long it would be before Cooper stopped blundering around in the woods.

Just as Mac reached the road, Joseph pulled up on Mac’s bike.  “ ** _Sara_** _!!!_ ”

MacGyver chivvied them out of the first anxious rounds of hugs and helped get Sara seated behind Joseph.  “Did you see both of them go by?  Sam and Wyo?”

“Yeah.  Just like you said.  I headed up here as soon as Wyo was out of sight.”

“It oughta take him a while to get back here – especially on foot.  Remember, don’t stop for _anything_ till you’re clear.  Heck, don’t stop for anything till you’re where you can get help!  You got that?”

“What about you and Sam?”

“We’ll be fine.  Sam’s gonna swing back round and pick me up. and we’ll high-tail it outta here.  We can come back tomorrow and pick up his bike and our gear then, after the dust’s settled.”  _I hope.  Long as nothing goes wrong._

“Must be nice, being able to look out for each other.”

Mac nodded, shrugged, realised he was smiling sheepishly.  The bike leaped forward and Joseph flew out of sight.  The kid _could_ ride, and he knew the road; he should be fine.  Mac glanced over his shoulder towards the belt of trees where he’d set his bait to draw off Cooper.

Cooper was barreling towards him from the woods, his face twisted in fury, moving very quickly in spite of his bulk.

“Aw, _man_.”

 

* * *

 

Sam kept his ears pricked up as he sped down the road.  It was odd riding without a helmet.  He’d never even tried it before; his uncles had been too insistent about him wearing one, and once he’d covered a few bad wrecks, he didn’t try to argue about it.  He’d never liked baseball caps, either – they were just, well, dorky – but they’d had to do something to hide the fact that his hair was so much lighter than Joseph’s.  At least the cap kept his hair out of his eyes.

Behind him on the road, he could hear the bellow of the other motorcycle as someone – probably Wyo – came roaring after him.  And he could hear it clearly when it coughed, sputtered, and died.

He couldn’t hear the swearing, but he could imagine it, and he mentally patted the tube of quick-setting epoxy in his pocket.  They’d fix his cracked fairing later, when there was time.  With the fuel valve of the other motorbike securely glued into the _off_ position, the bike would only run for a few minutes until the supply of gas in the carburetor was exhausted – and gunning the engine like that had used it up even faster.  Sam’s grin stretched from ear to ear as the wind danced in his face.

He began to slow down, cocking his ears hopefully; yes, he was sure he could already hear the familiar roar of his father’s Yamaha behind him in the distance, not moving quite as fast – not with a double burden and a rider who had a reason to be more careful.  But Joseph should be able to get past the stalled Wyo easily enough, and he’d have a clear road after that.  Wyo would be confused by the appearance of the second rider from behind him – and, hopefully, even more confused when Sam came charging back again.

 _The sooner Joseph’s outta here, the sooner I can go back and get Dad . . . have to give him a hard time about hitching rides with strangers.  Gotta get him outta there . . ._ Sam’s mind cringed away from the mental image of his father going up against Cooper.

Sam rounded a bend and nearly wiped out; he’d have laid the bike down if he hadn’t already been moving fairly slowly.  A great dark brute of a Land Rover was trundling up the Forest Service road towards him, its headlights wobbling up and down in the dusk as it wallowed along the uneven surface.  Sam swore under his breath and pulled over towards the side to get past it.

The SUV twisted sideways, blocking his way.

The headlights abruptly switched to high beams, pinning him down in an agony of glare.  Sam yelped and threw up an arm to shield his eyes.  He was too late to save his night sight; orange and purple afterimages danced across his eyes.  A blurry dark silhouette climbed out of the driver’s side of the Land Rover.

“God damn it, it’s one of those kids from the Rez . . . !”

Another voice, from the passenger’s side of the vehicle.  “I told them boys to make sure we’d be alone up here.  Can’t they do _anything_ right?”

The first figure resolved itself as the man came closer, blocking the worst of the direct glare:  a big, beefy white man in a Forest Service ranger’s uniform, his half-bald head reddened and sunburnt, the short fringe of hair sun-bleached.  He planted his hand on his hips, one hand uncomfortably close to a holstered pistol, and studied Sam.

“Ain’t so sure he’s from the Rez, Gus.  He looks a bit too well-fed.  And he’s white.”

The other man slid out of the passenger seat and stalked forward to examine Sam.  This one was older, taller, wearing the kind of elegant outdoorsy casual wear sold in upscale boutiques for wealthy would-be safari-goers.  The gear looked brand new and expensive, the khaki pants still sharply creased, the boots polished.

The man in the ranger’s uniform spoke first.  “You can just step away from the motorcycle, boy.  You ain’t goin’ nowhere till you answer a few questions.”

Sam reluctantly racked his cycle onto its centre stand.  _God, I hate being called ‘boy’._   He straightened his shoulders as he faced the two men.  “What’s going on?  Why’d you stop me?”

“Kinda uppity, ain’t you?  We’re askin’ the questions, boy.  Whatcha doin’ up here?”

“Camping.”

The man’s eyes narrowed.  “I don’t like bein’ lied to.  Where’s your gear?”

“Back at our campsite.”  _Oh, crap, why’d I say ‘our’?_

“You with someone?”

“Yeah, a friend of mine.  We’ve, um, we’ve been taking pictures of the eagles.”  He could hear the sound coming up behind him, steadily growing:  his father’s Yamaha.  Joseph and Sara.  _I’ve gotta get them past these goons.  Somehow._

The motorcycle swept around the last bend in the road, and he saw the two men turn to look at it, alarm and furious hostility on their faces.  Joseph had seen how the SUV was blocking the road, and swung around to duck around the other end, but he glanced over at Sam, puzzled.  Sam waved him on, frantically.

The ranger reached for his sidearm.  _Shit, they mean business . . ._  Sam pulled his hole card out of his pocket:  the little camera Willis had sent for testing had a nice bright flash.  The bright pop of the first shot got their attention all right.

 

* * *

 

 _Harry taught me a lot about the world, but I learned plenty from my dad too.  He liked hunting, but he liked watching animals even better.  There are some animals that’ll go after you no matter what you do, and some that’ll only attack if they think you’re a threat.  Startle them and they’ll tear you to pieces, but if you act like you’re harmless, they just might leave you alone._

Mac had tried to fall back from Cooper’s blow, but it had knocked him to the ground and he’d lain there, half stunned – the kid was a literal heavy hitter – trying to pull himself out of the slide down into the fog before Cooper came after him again.  But when Mac didn’t fight back or try to get up and run, the kid didn’t follow up on the attack.  Mac lay still for a few minutes, until he felt a prodding in his ribcage – not gentle, but not brutal either.

Cooper had squatted down and was poking at him with a finger.  “Hey.  Hey, you.  I’m talkin’ to you.”

Mac half-sat up, very slowly, as if he was facing an unfamiliar dog with a questionable disposition.  “I’m listenin’.”

“What the fuck is this thing?”

“It’s a motor drive,” Mac replied.  “What’s left of it, anyway.”  The diversion had worked, but Sam wasn’t going to be pleased.  _At least it wasn’t his camera that got pancaked._

“A what?”

“For a camera.  That’s why it clicked and flashed.”  Mac felt as if he was talking to a slow child.  It made an eerie contrast with Cooper’s size and the dusting of visible stubble on his chin.

“Funny lookin’ camera.  You a photographer?”

“Uh, no – my – ” he veered away from the word _son_.  No point in giving away leverage.  “My buddy is.  That’s his camera.  It _was_ his camera.”  _Okay, so it was Willis’, but never mind._

“Huh.”  Cooper studied the battered metal objects.  They’d had to jury-rig the motor drive to that particular camera, which had never been intended to use one.  The jury rig had held up pretty well, at least until Cooper had smashed it.

MacGyver rubbed the back of his head and wondered if he could try to stand up without getting jumped.  _I guess Cooper’s instructions didn’t include what to do with extra visitors._   He glanced over at the clearing and remarked casually, “Looks like your fire’s getting kinda low.  Should we build it up again?”

Cooper scowled at the fire, then looked down the road.  They had both heard the sound of a car engine.

“What the heck . . . you expectin’ company?” Mac asked.  He slowly rose to his feet, but he didn’t try to run; he’d seen the edgy nervousness return to the young man.  And he was still within arm’s reach of another blow.

The vehicle was a Land Rover, brand-new and huge.  Its headlights ripped a bright slash through the dusk; Mac blinked and looked away to the side, trying to save his sight.  He thought he saw two people in the front seat, and the hint of another in the back.  _I think I can guess what Wyo’s been waiting for . . ._

The SUV hadn’t quite stopped moving when the rear door was abruptly thrown open and Sam dived out, landing hard and rolling awkwardly, trying to catch himself with hands made clumsy by handcuffs.  “M-Mac!  MacGyver!  _ **Run**!!_ ”

 


	5. Tending the Fire

 

_**Five: Tending the Fire** _

 

 _Nineteen years of never, **ever** calling  anyone_ _‘Dad’ or ‘Father’ or ‘Pop’ or anything like that – my ‘uncles’ never tried to make me, thank god.  It was kind of a point I was always trying to make to the world.  Seems I had a lot of points to make, although I’m not so sure who I was trying to impress._

_Nineteen years.  And four months, and I almost choked calling my real father by his name instead of saying ‘Dad’.  It made my throat hurt._

_What was I supposed to do?  Let them know I had a weak spot? That we had the same weak spot?_

 

MacGyver did his best with Sam’s warning, but he didn’t get very far.

Cooper hit him with a bruising tackle, bringing him down hard on the unforgiving baked dirt of the roadside; then he hauled Mac unceremoniously to his feet and held him in a hammerlock while Wyo and the ranger – Cliff Stoddard – spilled out of the SUV and ran Sam to earth.  Mac had to watch, burying the visceral rage and the inward cringe, as Stoddard slammed Sam against the trunk of a tree, then unlocked and re-locked the handcuffs so Sam’s arms were caught around the trunk.

“That ought hold you,” the ranger grunted.

Gus Henderson, the older man in the ridiculously clean, expensive safari clothes, laughed.  “Well, lookit that.  It’s one of them treehugging freaks from California.”  He turned his attention to where Cooper was holding MacGyver in a painful grip.

The last of the daylight was nearly gone; they’d left the headlights of the big Land Rover on, slicing across the dimness, a painfully bright slash that made the darkness under the trees more intense.  In the harsh glare, Mac tried to figure out why Henderson looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him.

“So this is the other guy you said you ran into, Wyo?”  He studied Mac coolly.  “Now, the kid said you was just up here camping – and then he pulls out a fancy-ass camera and starts taking pictures, just like that.”  He produced the camera out of a pocket.  “What the hell are you really doing up here?”

Mac tried to shrug casually, and winced when Cooper tightened his already painful grip.  “Aw, c’mon, willya let up already?  We’re journalists.  We’ve been doing a story on the eagles – you know?  The bald eagles?  The Tetons population is coming along real well.  That’s why we came out here for our story.  How the species is recovering, the impact of the federal laws on Native spirituality, that kinda thing.  Sam’s my photographer.”  He tried to make his tone as bland and boring as possible.

“Journalists, huh?”

Mac pretended to bristle.  “Now, don’t you go tellin’ me that the nature beat isn’t real journalism.  I get enough of that attitude from my editor, okay?”

Cooper interrupted.  “He – he had another camera.  In the woods.  That’s what that light was, Wyo.  It was a camera.”  He gestured with his chin, indicating the larger camera where it lay on the ground next to the smashed motor drive.

Stoddard picked up the second camera and tossed both to Wyo.  “Here, kid.  Rip the film outta these.”

Mac could see the hard, flat look in Wyo’s eyes – he didn’t like being ordered around, and he really didn’t like being called ‘kid’.  Wyo grappled with first one, then the other camera, finally throwing both to the ground.

“What the _fuck_?  Where’s the film?”

Mac decided it was time to speak up.  “There isn’t any.  They’re digital cameras.”  _Sorry, Willis._

Stoddard and Henderson both glared at him with hostile incomprehension.  “ _What_?”

“Digital.  You know.  As in ‘computers’?  There’s no film.  Just an image file.”

If anything, the glares got hotter.  Henderson picked up one of the battered cameras, turning it over in his hands.  He froze.

“ _Shit_.”  His glare shifted from the camera back to MacGyver.

Stoddard fidgeted in confusion.  “What’s wrong?”

Wordlessly, Henderson handed the camera to Stoddard.  He walked over to where Cooper was holding Mac and leaned in until his face was only a few inches away, still glaring.  Mac tried not to struggle against Cooper’s intractable grip as he faced that ferocious blaze of naked hostility.

Stoddard was gawking at the printed label Willis had affixed to the camera.  “The Phoenix Foundation?  What the – that’s that buncha knee-jerk Injun-loving lefties out in California – the ones with the scholarship program.  What the hell . . . ?”

“Scholarship program?”  Henderson whipped his head around to glower at Stoddard in turn.  “ _Scholarship_ program!?  The Phoenix Foundation does contract security work for the government!  They’re in bed with the goddamned DXS!” His hand lashed out, catching Mac at the throat.  “What the hell are you _really_ doing up here?”

MacGyver choked and his vision blurred, shot through with black sparks.  Beyond Henderson’s rage-swollen face, he caught a glimpse of Sam’s face, taut and anxious, dimly lit in the backwash from the headlights.

 _Stay cool, Sam.  Don’t do anything stupid.  It won’t help either of us if we just trade off on drawing their fire._   He thought it so hard it seemed he was shouting.

Someone else _was_ shouting:  Stoddard.  “ _Take it easy, Gus_ – ”

“Take it _easy_?!  It’s Phoenix that’s been bankrolling Larry Whitecloud in his little crusade, you dickhead!” The chokehold let up, and Mac’s memory finally clicked into gear.  That was it.  It had been three or four months back – he remembered Whitecloud in his office at Phoenix, unwrapping the package, holding up the lantern he’d been given as a gag gift. _‘It’s so you can go looking for a BIA official who isn’t corrupt.’  ‘Great.  I can start by boiling down Gus Henderson’s greasy butt for lamp oil . . . ’_

Mac had tried to keep his face blank, but Henderson was still glaring at him, and he must have seen some sign of the sudden recognition.  His face reddened further, his eyes boring into Mac’s.

“I think you and me need to have a little talk, buddy.  See how long it takes for you to quit lyin’ to me.  That other motorcycle – who was that?”

“I told you, Mr. Henderson,” Wyo broke in.  “It was just a couple of kids from the Rez.  They don’t know nothin’.  They was up here and we chased ‘em off.  They ran home to hide.”

 _Oh, who’s lying now?_   Mac was about to speak when Sam called out instead.  “Not hardly.  They’ve gone in to town to get the cops.”  He met Mac’s eye, briefly; MacGyver gave a faint nod, and saw the equally subtle signs of relief.  _We’ve got a better shot at getting out of this if they don’t think they can just shoot us and dump us without anyone ever coming to look for the bodies._

Stoddard was looking nervous.  “Gus, c’mon.  We gotta get out of here.  We’re gonna have to get rid of these two, and then try to find those other kids.”

“We ain’t going _anywhere_ till I get a few answers.”  Henderson’s face had settled into an immovable wall, a wall with a volcano building behind it.  He glanced over his shoulder, towards the campsite where Wyo and Cooper had left their gear, then turned to Wyo.  “Kid, you still got that gun Cliff gave you?”

“Course.”  Wyo pulled out a 9mm Glock.  MacGyver followed the movement with his eyes.  He’d been trying to remember just what Whitecloud had thought Gus Henderson was involved in.  _Gotta be drugs . . . I bet the supply chain from LA to the East Coast runs right through Wyoming.  Lots of wide empty spaces, and with a coupla bent officials to smooth the way . . ._ He wondered what might turn up in a search of the big SUV.

At a gesture and a word from Henderson, Wyo fell in beside Cooper, pressing the muzzle of the gun to Mac’s head, urging him forward.  Stoddard scowled, but trailed along as they headed for the campsite.  Henderson stepped over to the Land Rover and killed the lights.  There was a clattering sound as he rooted around in the back.

Sam gave a frustrated yank on the cuffs that held him to the tree.  “Where are you taking him?”

“Relax, kid.  We won’t be that far away.”

Cooper actually giggled, the high-pitched sound rasping on the nerves.  “Yeah.  You’ll hear plenty.”

Sam peered after them in the gloom as they took his father away, Cooper holding his arms locked tightly behind his back, Wyo with the gun pressed against his skull.

He yanked again on the cuffs, stupidly, futilely.

_Shit!_

 

* * *

 

Under the trees, sudden darkness had fallen like a shutter when Henderson had switched off the headlights on the SUV.  MacGyver stumbled as Cooper shoved him towards the clearing.  He hoped the grip would ease and give him a chance to break loose, but instead it only tightened.  He gasped at the wrench to his shoulders.

“C’mon, Cooper, ease up a bit.  I’m gonna want those arms back.”

“Shut up.”

Ahead, the light from the campfire was building as Stoddard fed it.  The first round of wood had burnt down to a solid bed of bright coals, and the new fuel caught quickly, flames leaping up and dappling faces with shifting patterns of shadow and ruddy orange light.  Wyo took up a position a few feet away, glancing anxiously from Mac to Stoddard, then peering into the trees as they waited for Henderson.

When he strode into the clearing, he was wearing leather work gloves and carrying a lug wrench from the Land Rover.  MacGyver tensed up when he saw it.

“Aw, c’mon, guys.  Let’s not do anything stupid.”

“Stupid?”  Henderson’s eyes glittered.  He glanced at Stoddard.  “Did you search him yet?”

“Yeah.  No jacket, no wallet, no ID, nothing but loose cash and a pocketknife.”

Henderson slapped one end of the lug wrench against his free palm.  “Who the hell are you, mister?  What’s your real business up here?  You with Phoenix, or the DEA?”

“I told you!  We’re journalists!”  In the cooling night air, Mac could feel gooseflesh on his bare arms, and half-wished he still had his jacket; the T-shirt he was wearing didn’t feel like much protection.  But at least his ID was safely headed down the mountain with Joseph.

“The kid did have a press card,” Stoddard interjected.

“Forget the kid.  This guy’s the real problem.  You got a name?”

“MacGyver.”

“Okay, MacGyver.  Who sent you up here, and why?  And don’t give me that crap about being journalists.  Not with those fancy-ass cameras.”

“Look, guys, the cameras are prototypes.  One of the techie types from Phoenix knows my editor, and he arranged for us to test them, you know, under field conditions.”

“Who were those kids on the other motorcycle?”

Mac glanced at Wyo, and saw the tense, unpredictable strain in his eyes.  _Just what did you tell them so far?_   “Couple kids from Wind River.  We met ‘em earlier when we were out hiking.”

“Where are they going?”

“Like Sam told you.  They’re getting the cops.”

“Yeah?  Right, he did say that.”  Henderson leaned into Mac’s face, his breath hot and foul.  “ _Why?_ ”

Mac swallowed and tried to think.  He glanced at Wyo again.  _You didn’t tell them about Sara, did you._   He saw Wyo nervously fingering the gun that he still held trained on Mac.

Henderson stepped back, his eyes narrow.  “I’m getting tired of this.  Whoever you are, MacGyver, you’re a lousy liar.”

Mac set his teeth.  “You’re gonna shoot me anyway.  Remind me why I should tell you anything?”

He regretted the words as soon as he’d spoken them.  Henderson sneered and smiled, and the look in his eyes grew uglier.  On the far side of the fire, Stoddard licked his lips.

“Oh, I’m not going to shoot you.  Wyo here can take care of that.”  Henderson hefted the lug wrench.  “But not till you’ve explained a few things.”  He turned towards the firepit and jammed one end of the heavy steel wrench into the bed of coals.

Mac felt Cooper flinch behind him, and his own stomach lurched.  “Hey, now, wait a minute – ”  He didn’t try to keep the nerves out of his voice.

“I’m waiting,” Henderson said smoothly.  “I’ll wait a few minutes, anyway – Cliff, can’t you get this damned fire any hotter?  I ain’t waiting all night.”

Wyo looked sick.  MacGyver met his eyes again and gave his head a faint jerk, urging him to step closer.  “Wyo, you’re smarter than this.  Don’t you see what he’s doin’?”

Wyo looked from MacGyver’s face, sweating in spite of the cool night air, and Gus Henderson’s, dappled with the light of the dancing flames, his eyes glowing with malice and anticipation.

“He’s wearin’ gloves, and you’re not.  Cliff over there hasn’t drawn his gun.  You see where they’re headed.  You really want to let them set you and Cooper up to take the fall for this?”

Henderson glared over at them.  “Oh, now you’re feeling chatty, are you?”  He lifted the lug wrench and peered at the end.

Wyo licked his lips and shifted his grip on his gun.

Mac lunged forward in Cooper’s grasp.  He only gained a few inches, but it was enough; he’d been crouching slightly, so that in the uncertain light his actual height was masked.  He lashed out with one foot in a roundhouse kick, counting on Cooper’s hold to counterbalance him and keep him from falling.  Wyo hadn’t guessed just how long MacGyver’s legs were.  The foot in its hiking boot connected solidly with the gun; Wyo yelped with the pain in his hand as the Glock went flying.

The yelp turned into a scream of terror when the gun landed squarely in the bed of glowing coals in the firepit.

There was a moment’s timeless hush, and Mac thought he could almost hear a faint sizzle as the polymer of the Glock began to fail in the intense heat.  The plastic bumper at the base of the magazine began to smoke foully. 

Cooper swayed, staggering under the sudden weight of Mac’s overbalanced frame, but held his grip.  Henderson was roaring.  “You goddamned dumbass little – why the hell’d you let him do that?”  He poked at the gun with the end of the lug wrench, trying to flip it out of the coals, swearing.

The thin metal at the bottom of the magazine reached ignition temperature, and all the rounds in the fully loaded semiautomatic exploded in a chorus of popping shots.  The round in the chamber fired, hitting one of the stones ringing the firepit with a deafening crack and a whining ricochet.  Henderson ducked, dropping the wrench with a clatter, scrambling back from the fire.

Wyo ducked and shied away, wrapping his arms around his head.  Stoddard ducked as well, and Cooper cringed as Mac flung himself sideways, throwing him further off balance.  His grip on Mac’s right arm had slipped.  MacGyver yanked one hand free, feeling skin tear.  He planted his feet soldily underneath him again, bent his knees to bring his centre of gravity lower, and drove one hip back hard against Cooper, finding a grip in turn on the boy’s arm and pulling with all his strength.  The iron hold failed altogether and the boy roared with terror as he found himself levered off the ground for a brief instant of flight before crashing brutally to earth.

Mac had whirled and leapt as soon as he was free, springing on Stoddard and pouring all the pent-up tension and adrenaline of the moment into one hard blow to the man’s jaw.  The ranger crumpled to the ground.  Mac couldn’t tell if he’d made any sound; his ears were still full of Cooper’s screaming.  He whirled again, trying to place everyone’s location before he broke and ran for the slim shelter of the trees.

Wyo had half-risen and was howling in fear; Gus Henderson had backed away to the edge of the clearing.  In the centre, Cooper lay where he’d rolled halfway into the firepit, screaming in mindless pain.  The air was filled with the stench of burning hair.

MacGyver had one foot poised to run; instead, the foot struck earth and he sprang back towards the firepit, grappling Cooper’s writhing body, yanking him away from the greedy hands of the fire.  The boy’s denim jacket had caught, and Mac skinned out of his own T-shirt with one swift yank and started beating out the burning patches.

“ ** _Wyo_** _!_ ”  The boy started, stared at him.  “ _C’mon! **Gimme your jacket**!_ ”  Wyo pulled off the ill-fitting leather jacket and slung it to MacGyver, who wrapped it around Cooper.  The smothered flames choked and died.  Cooper lay on the bare earth, moaning like a keening wind.

“He’s hurt bad,” Mac gasped.  “We gotta get him to a hospital.  Wyo, you’re gonna have to help me lift him – ”

“Nobody’s goin’ _anywhere_.”  Henderson’s cool, impassioned voice cut across the firelit night.  MacGyver looked up at him, half startled; he’d forgotten the man was there. Henderson had drawn another gun, a .44 Colt Anaconda, and was holding it steady.  Mac felt his forehead prickle at the feeling of the muzzle trained on his head.  From Henderson’s stance, he was a practiced shot.

“C’mon, Gus – he needs _help_ – ”

“Waste of time, helpin’ his kind.”

“ ‘His kind’?  You mean drug addicts, or Native Americans?”

“ ‘Native Americans’.”  Henderson’s voice minced.  “God, I hate sayin’ that.  Hearing that.  _They_ still call _themselves_ Indians, but nobody else better.  Oh, nooo.  Hurts their goddamned Indian feelings.”  He lowered the gun slightly, but held it still ready, still pointing at MacGyver.  “Wyo, get the iron.  I think it oughta be plenty hot by now.”  His eyes sparked.  “I still got a whole pile of questions you haven’t answered.”

Mac glanced sideways at Wyo.  The boy was looking past Henderson, towards the trees; they had seen the same thing.  Wyo licked his lips and stepped away from Mac, away from the glowing inferno of the firepit.  “Look, Mr. Henderson – ”

Mac held his breath, waiting for betrayal.

“Cooper’s hurt bad, real bad – can’t we do something for him?”

Henderson actually laughed.  “Him?  Who the hell cares?  C’mon, kid,  You’re sellin’ drugs to your own people.  Thought you wanted into the big time, boy.  Don’t you go all wussy on me now.”

“Boo.”

Sam loomed up out of the darkness and the forest behind Henderson.  When the man spun around, Sam hit him three precise blows, almost taps with a measured fist:  once to the right arm, causing the hand that held the Colt to spasm and release its burden; once to the face; once to the junction of neck and shoulder.  Henderson crumpled like a fallen leaf.

Sam picked up the gun by its trigger guard.  “So what happens if I drop this one into the fire too?”

Mac’s grin was shaky.  “Pretty much the same thing, except you’d get an awful smell of burnt rubber from the grip.  All six shots would fire at once.  It’d sound kind of like a firing squad.”  Mac swallowed unconsciously, and Sam made a mental note to ask his father about that detail again someday.  Later.

“One shot will actually fire, but it’ll go off wild.  The other five shots will mess up the frame so bad the gun can’t be used again.”  After a moment, Mac added, “Except as a prybar.  Or a hammer.”

“Sounds like fun.”  Sam’s grin was incandescent delight.  “Not much use as evidence, though.”

“And Gus here’ll have a coronary when he wakes up and sees what you did to his prize piece.”

“Don’t tempt me.”  Sam unloaded the gun and tossed it aside.  He bent over Henderson, produced the handcuffs, and cuffed the man’s hands behind his back.

“So where’d you learn to fight like that?  China?”  Sam’s moves had been pure controlled force; Mac tried not to feel envious of the effortless skill he’d seen in those few efficient moves.

“Yeah, to begin with . . . Mom and I were there for almost two years.  I started picking up stuff.”

“I’ll bet.”  Mac gestured to the still-stunned Wyo to look after Cooper, and started hunting through Stoddard’s pockets for the keys to the Land Rover.

“God, I was scared,” Sam rattled on.  “It took me _forever_ before I could get my knife to fall out of my pocket so I could deal with the lock on those damned cuffs.  You know, Dad.  The knife you gave me?  It works real well on locks . . . I guess you already know that, huh?”

“Yeah, I know.  I didn’t know you knew.”

Sam grinned again, sheepishly, and shrugged.

 

 * * *

 

The fire had been burning for eleven hours already, and another generation of logs had nearly crumbled into soft, pale ash.  MacGyver glanced at where Charlie Thomas squatted beside the broad, deep earth firepit.  The old man nodded agreement, and Mac rose from his own haunches to collect a fresh round of logs and build the centre back up into flame.

Much of Sam’s excitement had ebbed since the early evening, and he was half dozing where he sat on a timber round next to the woodpile.  He started when Mac approached and scrambled to his feet to help.  The pile of cut logs, sorted out by size and type of wood, was much smaller than it had been at noon.

“Doesn’t it make you mad?” Sam asked.  “Just a little, I mean?  Being excluded like this?”

Mac looked over at the low, dark bulk of the sweat lodge, draped in canvas tarps.  The woven pattern on the thick blanket that hung over the doorway was only a faint glimmer of lighter and darker shapes.  Inside, he knew, it would be pitch dark and breathlessly hot, the air so full of live steam that it seemed almost solid.  They could only hear a occasional faint murmur of men’s voices, the words of the prayers and songs indistinct.

“What, you mean us only being allowed in for the first round of the sweat?  Why should it?  Besides,” he added as he filled Sam’s arms with wood, “you got _no_ idea just how hot it is in there right now.”

“I like heat.”

“Good thing you do.”  Sam had pulled his T-shirt back on long since, but Mac was still enjoying the feel of the chilly night air against his bare skin.  The contrast was especially sharp when he bent over the fire to add wood, the baking heat thumping against his face and chest even as the cool, dry breath of the summer night lay against his back and shoulders.  “They’re gonna be ready for the last set of rocks soon.”

Mac checked the rocks that lay waiting amongst the glowing coals.  There had been twenty-eight when they started.  Seven remained, ready for the final round of the sweat lodge:  rough lava rocks with sharp edges, black when they’d been placed in the pit before the fire was built.  They now glowed red and orange, rich sunset colours.  They’d be ready when the leader of the sweat called for them.

“And they’re letting us help tend the fire and carry the stones.  That’s one heck of an honour, especially for outsiders.”  He exchanged a grin with Thomas, whose face returned his smile without apparently changing expression.  The master fire keeper had hardly moved or spoken for hours, merely indicating with his eyes where wood should be placed.  Only when the rocks were called for at the beginning of a round did he rise, brushing off the ash from each with a green bough of fir as MacGyver held it up in the bowl of the shovel, speaking to each stone, escorting it to the entrance of the lodge where it was welcomed into that dark, hot, humid space where Joseph sat amongst the elders of his tribe, allowing their hopes and fears and prayers for his success in life to soak in through the pores of his skin.

Sam picked up a stray twig and dropped it onto a live coal, watching the puff of flame and the sudden fall into ash.  “What’s that word they keep saying at the end of each round?”

“It’s not a word, it’s a phrase.  It means ‘All my relations’ – it’s a reminder that, when you sweat, it isn’t just about you.  It’s about the whole world, and everyone you’re connected to.”

“That’s what you said to Joseph, when you first met him – that’s why he looked like that.”

“Well, yeah.  You gotta be careful what you mean by it, though.  They say the two biggest tribes in the country are the Cherokees and the Wannabes. You can’t blame ’em for being cranky about it.”  Mac looked over at the lodge again.  “Some things aren’t meant for tourists or dilettantes.”

“Or even for distant relations on a visit?”  MacGyver raised an eyebrow at Sam’s question.  “Well, are we?  Do _we_ have any Native blood, I mean?”

Mac sighed and shrugged.  “Sorry if it disappoints you, but no.”  He met Sam’s inquiring gaze with frank openness.  “Well, not that I know of, anyway.  I don’t really know a whole lot about our family tree, though – I don’t even know the names of all my own great-grandparents.”  Mac had never thought of that as a loss, but looking at Sam’s face, he suddenly regretted his sketchy knowledge of his own heritage.  _Our family tree.  We’ve all got the same number of ancestors, but most of us don’t know their names._

“So it’s possible?”

“Well, yeah, just about anything’s possible.  You can’t go makin’ claims on it, though.  Too many folks already do.”  Mac remembered some of Larry Whitecloud’s bitter, sardonic diatribes about ’New-Age wannabes’ and cultural appropriation.

Charlie Thomas suddenly laughed, a deep-chested roar of mirth.  He looked at MacGyver and Sam where they squatted by the fire, laughed again and shook his head, and rose from his own haunches to walk over to the woodpile and select another armful of fresh logs to maintain the fire.

 

 * * *

 

MacGyver eyed Pete as he wrapped up the story.  The older man was smiling – no, _smirking_.  If they hadn’t been such good friends, Mac would have found his knowing expression supremely irritating.

“Just as I said, Mac:  you’re a trouble magnet.  Both of you.  Good thing you handle it so well.”  He shifted his weight and frowned.  “One thing I don’t understand.  Why on earth didn’t you call me and let me know what was going on?  I remember reading about the arrests, but the reports never mentioned you at all.”

Mac shrugged.  “We didn’t want to make a big deal about it.  They mostly know about Phoenix through the scholarship program, and I didn’t want to give them any reason to think we were somehow involved with the cops or the authorities.  Nobody out there has much trust in the official bureaucracy.”

“Dad had a contact with the DEA in Cheyenne,” Sam interjected.  “We pretty much turned the whole thing over to him, and to the cops.  And we gave my Uncle Roddie a call, and he flew out and covered the story for the wire services.  He kinda spun it to focus more on Joseph’s role.  That’s what we wanted.”

 _What ‘we’ wanted, huh?_ Pete thought.  His smile grew deeper.

“ . . . and Uncle Roddie did a great job of playing up the idea of the tribes taking care of their own.”

“What happened to Cooper?”  Pete asked.  “Did he – I mean – ”

“He lived,” Mac said.  “And it turned out he knew plenty.  He rolled on them, big-time, and sang like a bird.  He nailed Gus Henderson, Stoddard _and_ Stoddard’s boss.”

“Can you believe it?” Sam interrupted.  “The chief ranger of the district, up to his armpits in the drug trade!  Coop gave them more’n enough to make the indictments stick.  He even got Wyo to roll, too.  They really didn’t like being shrugged off like garbage.”

“I bet Whitecloud had a field day when the news broke,” Mac added.  “He musta been almost dancing over it.”

“No ‘almost’ about it.”  Pete laughed and shook his head.  “Turns out Ruth made a bet with him when she got the Board to fund his push on the Wind River drug trade.”

MacGyver stared at Pete, a grin slowly spreading across his face.  “You’re kidding.”

“Not a bit.  He had to dress up in a feather bonnet and do a war dance in the Ops Centre.  Then she signed off on the next round of funding for the scholarship aggregation program.  We’ll be extending it to another three states for the next academic year.”

Mac was laughing.  “Oh, man.  I wish I’d seen it . . . ”

“Go talk to Willis. He got a video recording.”

A woman appeared in doorway, fashionably dressed, other than the Santa hat perched at a rakish angle on her head.  To MacGyver’s surprise, instead of the redoubtable Helen, it was Connie Thornton, Pete’s ex-wife.  Pete turned towards her as she placed a hand on his shoulder, but he didn’t seem surprised at her appearance.

“Pete, if you can spare a moment from the reunion?  Relax, don’t worry.  There’s no crisis – well, not yet, anyway!  Helen said she had a question for you, that’s all.”

After Pete had left, MacGyver looked over to where Sam was studying the big wall map again.  Mac hoped he wouldn’t ask too many questions about it – but sooner or later, he knew Sam would.  Or, worse, he’d start asking questions about the map upstairs in the Ops centre.  That could be bad.

Sam turned and looked at his father.  “ ‘Trouble magnet’?”

Mac shrugged.  “Something else that runs in the family.”

“Runs?  It –  ”

“ – practically gallops, yeah.”  Mac drummed his fingers softly on the arm of the couch.  “Sam . . . I don’t know if your mom ever told you . . . ”

“Yeah?”

“I did ask her to marry me.  Right after graduation.”

“Yeah?”

“She said, ‘Don’t be silly.  We’d both go nuts.’ ”

Sam studied his father’s face.  “That must’ve been kinda tough.”

“Yeah.  I’d spent two days working up the nerve to ask her.”  He looked up and met Sam’s eyes.  “And your birthday’s in November . . . she must’ve known at the time that you were on the way.”

Sam bit his lip and nodded.  “Um, Dad . . . ”

“Yeah?”  The word was an echo.

“About the college thing . . . I’ll think about it.  I’m not promising anything – just . . . I’ll think about it.”

MacGyver raised an eyebrow.

Sam didn’t quite return to full bristle.  “You think I haven’t noticed?  For six months, every time we need a favour, or a lift, or a place to stay – you’ve always got someone who’s glad to help.  It’s the Legions of Yafod.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“Yafod.  Yet Another Friend of Dad’s.  And they’re all old college buddies.  Or they’re someone you know through an old college buddy.  Just how big was your graduating class anyway?”

Mac scowled.  “You think I’ve been settin’ all that up?”

“No!  That’s the whole point!  I know you haven’t!”  Sam threw up his hands.  “And anyway . . . well, you and mom met in college, right?  That means something too.”  He stuffed his hands into his pockets.  “Like I said, I’ll think about it.”

A long silence followed, until Sam finally dropped his hunched shoulders a fraction of an inch and looked over at his father.  Mac was still sitting on the couch, waiting for him to look up.  He was smiling, but not smugly; his eyes were warm and proud.

“Good enough.”  He stood up.  “You’ll know when you’re ready.”

“ ‘When’?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re pretty sure of yourself.”

“Not really.  But I keep tryin’ things anyway.”  Mac glanced through the open door out to the lobby, and froze.  “Aw, _man_.”

“What’s up?”

MacGyver heaved a deep sigh and straightened his shoulders.  “Nikki’s headin’ this way.”

“Oh.”  After a long moment, Sam added, “You better get it over with.  She probably just wants to say hi.”

“Yeah.  Right.”

As he left, Sam called after him, “Don’t worry.  If you’re not back in eight hours, I’ll send a rescue mission.”

 

 * * *

 

Sam made his way to one of the phones at the big desk in the middle of the lobby, glanced around to make sure his father had gone out of sight, and dialed an internal line.

It was picked up on the first ring.

“It’s me, Helen.  Did we pull it off?”

He heard her laugh.  “Mission accomplished, and he wants to thank you personally.  He’s delighted.  Come on up – I’ll let you in.”

She was waiting at the entrance to the Operations Centre, where it took special clearance to get through the door, even during a holiday party – _especially during a party, I bet_.  Sam wondered briefly just what kind of a background the inconspicuous Helen actually had.

Pete was at his desk, staring at his present with a glow of delight.  Sam’s anxiety evaporated at the sight of the beaming face.  It might seem the essence of cruelty to give a picture to a man who was going blind, but he’d quizzed Helen at length as to just how much sight Pete retained.  He had sized and cropped and framed the photograph to take full advantage of the aging man’s narrow field of remaining vision, paying careful attention to detail and contrast.

_If you only have a little sight left, might as well fill it with something that really matters._

It had been easily the best of the photos he’d taken during their hang gliding sessions – he’d caught his father unawares in a tight close-up, leaning into a banking turn, his face rapt with concentration and aglow with wild joy.  MacGyver’s long hair had blown free of the cloth he’d tied around his head and was whipping around his face, but the wild tangle couldn’t hide the faint hint of grey beginning to show at the temples.  The sun was drawing bright sparks from the errant threads of silver.  In his exaltation, Mac’s face looked young and ageless at the same time, the dark eyes glowing, the lines of the face smoothed away to almost nothing around the bright grin.

It had been a challenge, keeping the picture a secret from his father, but the friend whose darkroom he’d been using that day – Yet Another Friend of Dad’s – had been only too eager to help in the conspiracy.

“Mr. Thornton – ”

Pete looked up.  His eyes were watering, but there was a look of peace on his face.  “Please, Sam.  Pete.”

“Okay.  Pete.  _Do_ you have some kind of assignment for my father in Hawaii?”

Pete smiled broadly.  “Well, no.  Not in Hawaii.  But we do have a couple of staff on a botanical cataloguing expedition out in the cloud forest in Costa Rica . . . I’d be a lot happier if someone could look in on them personally and make sure they’re all right.  They’re in a very remote part of the country.”

“Dad said something once about scientists needing a lot of babysitting.”

“Yeah, that’s an old joke around here.  Good thing you and your father aren’t exactly scientists.”

“Yeah, we’re – ”  Sam caught himself in mid-sentence and had to swallow.  _We.  Us._   “We’re not really babysitters, either, though.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘troubleshooter’.”

Sam grinned.  “Yeah.  Good word.”

Helen looked at Pete as he watched the young man stride back through the Operations Centre and duck through the door.  She smiled, drawing a deep, relieved breath at the look on the old man’s face.

 

 * * *

 

MacGyver eventually found Sam again; he had returned to the lounge in the lobby and was deep in conversation with a tall, dark-haired man who was gesticulating at the displays.  Mac wondered for one sinking moment if his worst fears were being realised, and then drew a deep breath, relaxing again.  Sam wasn’t being regaled with wild stories about his father’s exploits; they weren’t discussing the map at all, or the lively history of Phoenix’ operations.  Michael Many Horses, the lead photographer for Phoenix, was expounding on the technical details of some of the photos in the brag displays.

Mac waved his fingers at them and tried to retreat, but Michael saw him, clapped Sam on the shoulder, and took his leave.  “Like I said, kid, good start.  Let me know how the pitch sessions go.  Remember, show ‘em four, five other pictures before you spring that eagle shot on ‘em.  And you tell me what they say, and what they offer.  I know the market.  I’ll tell you if it’s bull or not.”

“So.”  Mac ran a finger along the map, unconsciously tracing a line from Afghanistan to the an-Nafud.  “You had enough of the big company party yet?”

“Yeah.  I’m not used to being around this many people.”

“Me neither.”

Sam looked at the constellation of pins dotting Central and South America.  “So.  You had enough of the road yet?”

Mac looked wary.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sam shrugged.  “Are we all caught up yet?  You and me?  Is playtime over?  Back to work already?”

MacGyver turned away from the map and planted his hands on his hips.  “Willya drop the chip off your shoulder already?  You’re too big to spank even if I believed in corporal punishment.”  Sam blinked at him as he continued.  “And even if you do decide to go to college, I am _not_ gonna dump you on some campus and ‘get back to my life’.  _This_ is my life, you’re in it, and it’s the only one I’ve got.”  Sudden uncertainty crossed his face.  “Unless _you’ve_ had enough already of having your dad hanging around . . . ”

Just like that, Sam’s fences blew down.  The bristles and defensiveness melted – for the moment, anyway.  “From what I’ve seen, you’ve got about nineteen lives, and you must’ve used seventeen or eighteen of them up by now.”

“More’n that,”  MacGyver muttered.

“Gonna tell me about any of it?  You keep ducking my questions every time I ask about anything you’ve done that was dangerous.  Dad, _I’ve figured that part out._   It scares the hell out of me, but I’m getting used to it.”  He grinned unsteadily, shaking his head.  “And there’s plenty I can learn from you.  But just for the record, that doesn’t include fighting.”

“How about stayin’ out of fights?”

“You any good at that?”

“Nope.”  Mac grinned.  “Not really.  Just ask Pete!  So where’d you learn anyway?  You were only nine when you left China.”

“Um, here and there . . . ”

“I’ll bet.  Well, so did I.  You started out younger, and with better teachers.  So next time around, you can take first crack at the bad guys, and I’ll stand back and critique _your_ style.”

 _Next time._   Sam liked the sound of that.  “I suppose you’ll be sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, telling me how the bad guys were a lot bigger when you were a kid?”

“Are you kidding?  Why, when I was your age, I was wrassling Afghan warlords fifteen feet tall, with ten-inch teeth and spikes for hair.  And laser beams that shot out from their eyes.”

 

 

Pete returned to the ground floor lobby of the Phoenix building in time to see MacGyver and Sam heading out the door, their motorcycle helmets under their arms, still razzing each other.  He turned to Connie and exchanged a confident smile.

_I have an aunt – she’s very old now – who’s always been terribly superstitious.  She’s got this conviction that it’s terribly bad luck to ‘watch a person out of sight’ – to watch them go until you can’t see them any more.  She’s always said that it means you’ll never see them again._

_The way my eyesight’s failed – is still failing – every time I see anyone, it could be the last time._

_But I know in my heart that I’ll see MacGyver again._

**Author's Note:**

> As always, special thanks are due to those who Made It Happen: Liz, Glenn, Jess, Melissa, and Lothi.
> 
> I'd like to highly recommend any and all works by Sherman Alexie, especially _Ten Little Indians_ , _The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian_ and _The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven_.


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